Yes, It is another 'End Game' thread - this time with proposed solution.

[Seljuck]

Right now there is no real End Game in DDO. Everyone knows that, we have plenty of thread that can prove it. Lot of people complain also about overall game difficulty and other pressing issues. I do not have any solution for heroic/epic difficulty changes, it depends on too many factors and is not easy for a change. But there is a way to solve the problem of End Game.

The idea is not necessarily new, refers to what we had in the past and what worked out well. This should resolve the problem of end game difficulty and the lack of usefulness of older, epic items.
Proposed solution will not be cheap, and require a lot of coding time. But the effect is worth the costs incurred.

To the point.
I will explain the idea in 3 parts. To fully understand it, please read the whole text. Single points out of context may mislead you.

Pros:

adding a real end game to the game
a new level of difficulty as a remedy for the lack of challenges
solution to the problem of useless ‘old’ epic items
new end game crafting
motivation for playing in a group due to new difficulty
mythic difficulty as new module - income for Turbine

1) End Game

According to the statement, Dev does not have a plan to increase the maximum level of characters over thirty. This is why the End Game should be set at this level. Just create a new level of difficulty, such as Mythic (described in detail in the next section), available only for the thirty-level characters. Mythic difficulty level would only be added to quests that currently has epic version. Timers can also be considered, but should not be longer than 3-6 hours for quests and 2d18h for raids, without the possibility of their omission by the bypasses. Mythic should have only one version of difficulty, like the old epic.
As an incentive to run new difficulty, players will be given new ingredients, that combined with 'blank item' gives final item: 'Sentient Item' (System described in detail in the third paragraph). New difficulty, also give players opportunity to acquire Sentient Runes and Cells that will improve 'Sentient Items'.

2) New Difficulty

This is probably the hardest part, which requires time and resources. It's hard to imagine the actual End Game without a new level of difficulty, which will be characterized by a different approach than the standard epic. You should change players attitude from: ‘Brute force solve everything’ to ‘Only the cleverness and appropriate tactics solve it’.
In order to achieve this goal, you should significantly reduce the strength of the players, (NOT BY Player nerfs) but by skilful limiting damage taken by opponents.

For this purpose I introduce a number of factors:

Addition of PRR/MRR to opponents - major factor in defense. Each opponent should have some value of prr/mrr. Strongly armored opponents or some creatures could have up to 75% reduction. This factor can be explained by heavy armor, shield, scales or a thick layer of the skin.
Actually working AC - In its current form, the AC practically does not work. Even the wizard without power can easily hit every enemy in melee combat. Miss is now less common than critical hit on vorpal. While the total change in the mode of action of AC is rather unlikely, increasing the coefficient of opponents AC is perfectly possible. Increase of AC by 30-50% should significantly affect the usefulness of this factor.
Dodge/Concealment - Main protection of agile opponents, up to 50% for some creatures. Can be explained by small size of opponent, high speed or special abilities.
Randomness - One of the major shortcomings of the current opponents is their predictability. An experienced player does quests schematically, knows every opponent and know what to expect. Randomness factor may change this. Random opponents, random effects like: DR, resistance to specific damage, resistance to specific element, an increased prr, special attacks, slowing aura, regeneration, teleportation in a small range etc.
Potions/Wands - any intelligent, humanoid opponent should have a set of several different potions and wands, which if necessary could be use. F.eg. heal, shield (spell), invisibility etc.
Special attacks - Players have their cleaves, stuns, bursts, forms of monster hold etc. Opponents, on the other hand don’t use any special attacks, unless they are main bosses or specific creatures. To address this issue, give every opponent set of special attack like: chain-hold, cleave, deadly diseases, poisons, stun, daze, charm (Yes players can be charmed to!), pin (check shiradi ED), shattered armor (reduced prr) etc.

Quest mechanic:


Opponents - First, the level of opponents should be maintained at the level of epic elite Necro 4, Storm Horns or Mask of Deception. Their strength should not be in more HP and more powerful attacks, but in their special abilities and increased defense.
Champions - Introduction of champions is an interesting move. However, more needs to be developed. Champions as natural leaders should receive the effects such as of auras. Auras should affect champion allies, increasing their ability.
Adaptation – Player is using alot of Magic Missiles? Let's use Shield spell. Party full of monkchers? Chain and slow effect should do the trick. Caster with mass hold/energy burst on board? Freedom of Movement and protection from elements should help. And so on.
Cooperation – DDO is MMORPGs focused on grouping! At least it WAS focused on grouping. Currently, due to the changes in the game is rather a game for single player. This tendency should be stopped! Game should encourage for grouping. To achieve this quests should be designed for players cooperation. They could be done solo.. but that should be extremely hard due to quest mechanic or time invested.
Diversified Puzzles – End fight in Monastery of the Scorpion comes in mind, also whole Shadow Crypt quest, it’s one big puzzle. No more Detour like quests, zerging through it is boring. We need more quests like VoN 5, The Pit etc. just check next point.
Diversified quest design – there’s not much to say here, quest names explain everything: The Pit, Shadow Crypt, Spies in the House, Vault of Night, The Dreaming Dark, The Lord of Eyes, Stealer of Souls, Acute Delirium, Litany of the Dead, The Titan Awakes, The Twilight Forge.

3) End Game Crafting & Items

Time for the most interesting part from the players point of view - New Items. Currently, there is a tendency in the game to exclusion 'old' equipment by new, where the old most often comes from the most recently added module. This causes a lot of confusion when planning your next life, or a build for the 'end game'.
Often fall suggestions to remake the old epic items from 20ml, because in its current form are completely useless.
In the near future Dev plans to implement new type of Items, 'Sentient'. Because of the small amount of information that we received on this topic, it's hard to say how do Dev envision this being implemented in DDO.
How can you combine all of these elements for the benefit of the players and Dev?
Creating a new end game crafting, which, based on effective, existing solutions will encourage players to continue playing.
The end result of crafting, would be new kind of object, said Sentient Items. To create a Sentient Item would be needed:

Three types of ingredients, 2 (unbound) to find quests and 1 (BTC), available only in raids.
Base item, such as from epic crafting or quests available after the MotU. (BTC / BTA)
Charm, which is also the formula that describes what components are needed to create an Sentient Item (Unbound).
After the creation of the item ml would be 30. Each item would have the individual number of slots (but not more than 3) for special runes. For each item only one rune with a particular effect can be inserted. Once inserted, runes cannot be released. Runes would add new effects to the item, which, together with increasing experience would strengthen their effect. Runes can be gathered from the final chests on new difficulty. They can be also bought from players or auction house.
Gaining experience by weapons can be solved by introducing a 'charging'. Component, that would charge SI, would only be available in a new difficulty, in several versions, which differ in the amount of experience. Charging Cells would be unbound and tradable.
Sentient Items should not be 'stronger' than Thunder-Forged items or necro4 epic items. Their 'power' should result from the different effects.

Sample item:


Epic Seal of the Earth
Sentient Seal of the Earth


Stoneskin- 3 Charges (Recharged/Day: 3)
Avatar of Earth - 1 Charges (Recharged/Day: 1)(Exclusive) - for 15s/character level you take the form of Elder Earth Elemental.
Under earth form you gain DR30/-, immunity to critical hits, diseases and poison effects. You have two forms of attack, standard melee attack and boulder toss.
All your attacks deal blunt and acid damage. Under Earth elemental form all your weapons and their effects don't work.
Strength of Earth Avatar raises with the level of item.



Natural Armor +6
Natural Armor +10


Acid Resistance +30
Acid Resistance +50


Yellow Augment Slot
Green Augment Slot



Sentient Rune Slot



Sentient Rune Slot



What do you guys think about this ?

[MaeveTuohy]

I agree that the old epic s/s/s items should get this treatment, or something like it.

While the level 30 quests/end game will no doubt need tougher opponents, I would still prefer to see player power dialed back, rather than just powering up our opponents.

[Seljuck]

I agree that the old epic s/s/s items should get this treatment, or something like it.

While the level 30 quests/end game will no doubt need tougher opponents, I would still prefer to see player power dialed back, rather than just powering up our opponents.

It's very unlikely that we will get nerfs to ED or Classes. People dont like it... and to be honest it's to late for that. People get used to it. Turbine should do it in few patches after MotU was released.

[janave]

I would be happy with filling a group for any current top level raid any time a day.

Basically if you are a "late arrival" to any content that is only run for loot, you are mostly stuck. Then you can choose to TR or quit. Most people who would be available to play end game content rather TR due to the lack of players, and then it goes on every cycle.

As i see it, its rarely a direct lack of players, it is more a lack of players willing to post and join pick up groups. For medium large guilds, this may be a non-issue. For everyone else, its really a bad place to be at. Stuckness does not feel good.

What would help short term is to allow raid completions to persist. It would at least buff the TRing scene, more groups, more fun, allowing some measure of progress.

[Nestroy]

Giving new loot to the "Mythic" endgame difficulty is just another round of power creep. It will make the "Mythic" difficulty more easy for the haves and will make it more than just a big entry blockage for the have-nots. The result woul dbe like with elite and epic elite nowadays that everyone and the grandma from said player tries to do the difficulty "for the loot" and there will be endless pressure to make that content runable for everybody.

While I am personally totally in favor of a new difficulty (I would love to see that across the board for all the quests) I am strongly opposing just another new round of power creep. Give cosmetics instead, or a higher percentage to find rare loot from the base quest or anything. But please stop the power creep!

[Seljuck]

Giving new loot to the "Mythic" endgame difficulty is just another round of power creep. It will make the "Mythic" difficulty more easy for the haves and will make it more than just a big entry blockage for the have-nots. The result woul dbe like with elite and epic elite nowadays that everyone and the grandma from said player tries to do the difficulty "for the loot" and there will be endless pressure to make that content runable for everybody.

While I am personally totally in favor of a new difficulty (I would love to see that across the board for all the quests) I am strongly opposing just another new round of power creep. Give cosmetics instead, or a higher percentage to find rare loot from the base quest or anything. But please stop the power creep!

Bolded and underlined for You!

Sentient Items should not be 'stronger' than Thunder-Forged items or necro4 epic items. Their 'power' should result from the different effects.

Maybe I explain this a little. By different effects i mean diversity. Those effects dont have to be stronger, or bring more power creep. They goal is to bring new solutions, new possibilities.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

I'm still waiting for people to explain to me exactly what an end game is...

Some seem to think it mean several raids, and cool gear to grind... and grind and grind....
But eventually you get all the gear... and then... there is nothing left to do....




Now, in my real opinion there should not be an end....
there should just be a long pause....
and then eventually we raise the cap again.


Also IMO, if people do not enjoy running quests just for the thrill of running them, then you can never have an end game.
Cap means no more XP rewards.
...and like I said, eventually you get all the gear (or at least all the gear you want and can store)

So those who only play to get a reward.... will eventually be bored....
unless... there is no end game... unless they keep moving the finish line farther and farther away....

If you really want an end game, IMO you need to evolve past that play for XP/loot mentality.



But.... even if you play for fun only, the fun runs out too.... unless there is a constant stream of new end games quests....
and even though Turbine has gotten better, there cannot produce new content fast enough to really keep people entertained.....


So I guess the best they can do is stall us....
Give us a grind I guess. a super long grind to keep us busy for awhile....
then figure out the next part....

Duodeca-completionist feat FTW!

[zwiebelring]

New difficulty without chests or any other reward other than bragging rights or guild renown. Hunting rewards to trivialize this kind of endgame is a paradox. As is hunting rewards to have it just a little easier.

If you want back the endgame with lvl. cap 20 then set 'mythic' at lvl. 35. But seriously, why? The only thing the devs could do was to bloat up mobs even more, bring more mobs and make them all red names or purple name... that's boring as it can be.

And when is mythic difficulty boring? What exactly are you contributing by these new difficulties? It may challenge for another short period of time and after that, you propose ahigher difficulty... just play other games, really.

[slarden]

/signed for overall concept of mythic quests and epic level crafting - details need refinement.

These ideas have been presented/suggested before, but this is a really good summary of the concepts. Well done.

I think they should just enhance cannith crafting rather than come up with a new crafting mechanic. I don't want to see TF weapons remain the best in the game - too many were obtained without running the raid.

Not everyone enjoys puzzles. I don't find looking up a 5x5 shroud puzzle solution on my phone to be a challenge. The 3x3 and 4x4 can at least be solved logically so those are good. Things like the ADQ riddle where people look it up on the wiki are just gates - not challenges.

The end game prior to U14 worked really well because 90% of the best gear was easy to get - shroud items, TOD rings, House D and House P epics, cannith crafting, festival gear, house C Challenges, echrono items. The other 10% was harder to get for the true grinders - eross, esos, etc. eSos was the only item in the game that was completely out of balance. Still, terror was the best trash beating weapon even over eSos because of the proc rate and epic monster HP so eSos only really made a big difference on bosses.

[Seljuck]

I'm still waiting for people to explain to me exactly what an end game is...

Some seem to think it mean several raids, and cool gear to grind... and grind and grind....
But eventually you get all the gear... and then... there is nothing left to do....




Now, in my real opinion there should not be an end....
there should just be a long pause....
and then eventually we raise the cap again.


Also IMO, if people do not enjoy running quests just for the thrill of running them, then you can never have an end game.
Cap means no more XP rewards.
...and like I said, eventually you get all the gear (or at least all the gear you want and can store)

So those who only play to get a reward.... will eventually be bored....
unless... there is no end game... unless they keep moving the finish line farther and farther away....

If you really want an end game, IMO you need to evolve past that play for XP/loot mentality.



But.... even if you play for fun only, the fun runs out too.... unless there is a constant stream of new end games quests....
and even though Turbine has gotten better, there cannot produce new content fast enough to really keep people entertained.....


So I guess the best they can do is stall us....
Give us a grind I guess. a super long grind to keep us busy for awhile....
then figure out the next part....

Duodeca-completionist feat FTW!

Do you still have that drill when you finish 1000 time same quest that is predictable? That cant surpirse you due to game mechanic??

Let's check reincarnation.. do you know any other game with that feature? How raincarnation can be 'End Game' where you dont have randomness factor in quest design?

Yes Eng Game is grind. It just shouldn't be so noticeable. SHould be hide behind game mechanic, properly rewarding crafting. Some ammount of diversified content.

[Nestroy]

New difficulty without chests or any other reward other than bragging rights or guild renown. Hunting rewards to trivialize this kind of endgame is a paradox. As is hunting rewards to have it just a little easier.

If you want back the endgame with lvl. cap 20 then set 'mythic' at lvl. 35. But seriously, why? The only thing the devs could do was to bloat up mobs even more, bring more mobs and make them all red names or purple name... that's boring as it can be.

And when is mythic difficulty boring? What exactly are you contributing by these new difficulties? It may challenge for another short period of time and after that, you propose ahigher difficulty... just play other games, really.

I would say, same rewards as elite diffculties. Just no extra rewards. Except for some cosmetic tokens to ensure bragging rights.

[Seljuck]

New difficulty without chests or any other reward other than bragging rights or guild renown. Hunting rewards to trivialize this kind of endgame is a paradox. As is hunting rewards to have it just a little easier.

If you want back the endgame with lvl. cap 20 then set 'mythic' at lvl. 35. But seriously, why? The only thing the devs could do was to bloat up mobs even more, bring more mobs and make them all red names or purple name... that's boring as it can be.

And when is mythic difficulty boring? What exactly are you contributing by these new difficulties? It may challenge for another short period of time and after that, you propose ahigher difficulty... just play other games, really.

Please read again whole my post. Everything is there.. no need to explain that again. Especialyl part about new special attacks, randomness etc.

[Kawai]

each quest in game, from Korthos to Mark of Death & beyond...
-grants one brick on completion.

take your bricks & build a house.

@end-game you've built your house.
(takes completionist or some chit, who knows?)
-next comes adding things to house.

sorry, bricks cannot b duped.
so u goobers from elsewhere will just have ta earn it. :P

---plot twist:
screw houses.
lvl 50 pls. :)

[MaeveTuohy]

It's very unlikely that we will get nerfs to ED or Classes. People dont like it... and to be honest it's to late for that. People get used to it. Turbine should do it in few patches after MotU was released.

They nerfed spell power a few years ago. They have dialed back some abilities. I don not believe that it is too late.

[Monkey-Boy]

I'm still waiting for people to explain to me exactly what an end game is...

Something to do with a capped character that still advances said character.

[Monkey-Boy]

each quest in game, from Korthos to Mark of Death & beyond...
-grants one brick on completion.

take your bricks & build a house.



This isn't a bad idea actually, at higher levels we're supposed to become lords with castles and stuff. And you could probably squeeze a few dollars out of us.

[MagicBlue]

I'm still waiting for people to explain to me exactly what an end game is...

Some seem to think it mean several raids, and cool gear to grind... and grind and grind....
But eventually you get all the gear... and then... there is nothing left to do....


Now, in my real opinion there should not be an end....
there should just be a long pause....
and then eventually we raise the cap again.


Exactly.
In single player rpg the game end when the story ends.
RPG permit players to replay the same game on a different class to have a different experience of what they played before.
But when the story ends the game ends.

After some time a new game or a sequel will come out.

DDO did the same.
Once at cap you can reincarnate and have new experience.
When capped again you replay the same game.
When you complete it you have two choices: replay it again or wait someting new/different.

Turbine can put every end game people want, but the word tell it: it's an END.

[Seljuck]

Exactly.
In single player rpg the game end when the story ends.
RPG permit players to replay the same game on a different class to have a different experience of what they played before.
But when the story ends the game ends.

After some time a new game or a sequel will come out.

DDO did the same.
Once at cap you can reincarnate and have new experience.
When capped again you replay the same game.
When you complete it you have two choices: replay it again or wait someting new/different.

Turbine can put every end game people want, but the word tell it: it's an END.

Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). How is MMO can be compared to SP cRPG??

I finished heroic content in DDO 17th times. Right now I take 1 YEAR break from heroic. So many lives was exhausting. Do you think that I would actually finish SP game, same content, so many times? I know, that I would not. Tell me did You finished any cRPG game 17th times??

You cant compare SP cRPG to MMORPG. That's two different worlds.
If u finish main plot in MMO, from Dev perspective, You must have something to do or You will quit, and MMO, especially f2p cant lose players because they reach so called END and dont have anything to do.

[Vellrad]

Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). How is MMO can be compared to SP cRPG??

I finished heroic content in DDO 17th times. Right now I take 1 YEAR break from heroic. So many lives was exhausting. Do you think that I would actually finish SP game, same content, so many times? I know, that I would not. Tell me did You finished any cRPG game 17th times??

You cant compare SP cRPG to MMORPG. That's two different worlds.
If u finish main plot in MMO, from Dev perspective, You must have something to do or You will quit, and MMO, especially f2p cant lose players because they reach so called END and dont have anything to do.

I basically agree with this post, but I'd like to note that each year since 2004 I complete Icewind Dale, Heart of Winter expansion, then repeat both on Heart of Fury difficulty.

[JOTMON]

Giving new loot to the "Mythic" endgame difficulty is just another round of power creep. It will make the "Mythic" difficulty more easy for the haves and will make it more than just a big entry blockage for the have-nots. The result woul dbe like with elite and epic elite nowadays that everyone and the grandma from said player tries to do the difficulty "for the loot" and there will be endless pressure to make that content runable for everybody.

While I am personally totally in favor of a new difficulty (I would love to see that across the board for all the quests) I am strongly opposing just another new round of power creep. Give cosmetics instead, or a higher percentage to find rare loot from the base quest or anything. But please stop the power creep!


That is the whole point of stepping stone quests.
You work your way up getting better gear, experience, tweaks, etc... and challenge quests.. Successfully defeating the challenge gives you a shot at a reward which then gives you some improvement that then allows you to go to the next level of challenge.

Players are supposed to work their way up not just stone to cap and get given best of the best stuff without grinding the quests/raids.
This is the philosophy of most games. struggle to the top while getting better each step.
Why would anyone expect to jump into endgame content and be effective without grinding out goodies.


The power creep problem comes into play when more powerful items are released into content that never had them before or players start running lower level content with all their high level gear.
.. like Feathers revamp of loot that allowed low level generic random gen +10 damage when the best raid at the time only had +5.


Turbine needs to draw a line in the sand for difficulty, these are the benchmarks of succession, beat the challenge move on, don't beat the challenge, figure out what you need to change and try again.
Grind and regrind challenges until you get what you need and move on.

Mythic level makes sense, a high tier challenge meant for those that have ground out the best of the best existing stuff and are now wanting more challenge and more better stuff.
and Yes Mythic gear should be better than Epic, or Hard, or Casual.. that is the point of challenging and defeating new content, so you can move forward.

We see too much of the Epic level players running normal and lower level content because there is no worthy endgame content to grind.
Players are doing ETR's and ER's and ITR's or rehashing lower level content to the detriment of lower level players.
a Shroud 18-28 just means level 18 toons are being carried through content that should have presented a challenge.
Elites don't care because they just want the stuff from shroud for TR's, there is no penalty to anyone in the group other than the loss of some poor raid xp by having high level toons join their groups.


Mythic level content would offer a challenge to high level toons while giving access to goodies worth running for.
Yes it would strip these endgame players from lower level content.. but these endgame toons don't belong in low level content with lower level toons.
This should be endgame focussed, so low xp and min level 28 to get in,, this is not content for levelling off destinies, this is the be at your best challenge content.
Saga rewards for xp would be fine.

Once the game gets more top heavy with content the migration will push players into the endgame instead of milling about waiting for stuff to do.

I had suggested a mythic raid chain that I thought would be relatively easy to implement and add a lot of endgame challenge and grind.
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/451312-Mythic-level-Raids

[jalont]

That is the whole point of stepping stone quests.
You work your way up getting better gear, experience, tweaks, etc... and challenge quests.. Successfully defeating the challenge gives you a shot at a reward which then gives you some improvement that then allows you to go to the next level of challenge.

Players are supposed to work their way up not just stone to cap and get given best of the best stuff without grinding the quests/raids.
This is the philosophy of most games. struggle to the top while getting better each step.
Why would anyone expect to jump into endgame content and be effective without grinding out goodies.


The power creep problem comes into play when more powerful items are released into content that never had them before or players start running lower level content with all their high level gear.
.. like Feathers revamp of loot that allowed low level generic random gen +10 damage when the best raid at the time only had +5.


Turbine needs to draw a line in the sand for difficulty, these are the benchmarks of succession, beat the challenge move on, don't beat the challenge, figure out what you need to change and try again.
Grind and regrind challenges until you get what you need and move on.

Mythic level makes sense, a high tier challenge meant for those that have ground out the best of the best existing stuff and are now wanting more challenge and more better stuff.
and Yes Mythic gear should be better than Epic, or Hard, or Casual.. that is the point of challenging and defeating new content, so you can move forward.

We see too much of the Epic level players running normal and lower level content because there is no worthy endgame content to grind.
Players are doing ETR's and ER's and ITR's or rehashing lower level content to the detriment of lower level players.
a Shroud 18-28 just means level 18 toons are being carried through content that should have presented a challenge.
Elites don't care because they just want the stuff from shroud for TR's, there is no penalty to anyone in the group other than the loss of some poor raid xp by having high level toons join their groups.


Mythic level content would offer a challenge to high level toons while giving access to goodies worth running for.
Yes it would strip these endgame players from lower level content.. but these endgame toons don't belong in low level content with lower level toons.
This should be endgame focussed, so low xp and min level 28 to get in,, this is not content for levelling off destinies, this is the be at your best challenge content.
Saga rewards for xp would be fine.

Once the game gets more top heavy with content the migration will push players into the endgame instead of milling about waiting for stuff to do.

I had suggested a mythic raid chain that I thought would be relatively easy to implement and add a lot of endgame challenge and grind.
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/451312-Mythic-level-Raids

At least one person gets it.

[Nestroy]

...

Again, the main problem is one of perspective. When the vets have farmed out the endgame gear (as they did with epic gear when the cap had been lv 20) they will cry again that the game has become too easy (because of the power creep from the endgame gear). And most players wanting to take a shot at endgame will not be allowed to enter the quest, because they are missing the propper end game gear (whatever eSOS this will be then). But the endgame gear can only be farmed in end game, so basically the have-nots will be excluded from the endgame crowd. And there will be much crying in the forums about this. We all had this already, for quite some time, when lv. 20 was cap. Can you remember the LFM panel then, with what to bring to endgame upon entering? Actually, this is why I am so heavilly opposed to power creep end gear. Looking cool thingies that do not give special powers - any time! But giving another +2 on stats and +4 spell penetration and +20 on damage and whatever to make endgame easier for the haves is not a good idea. Powercreep should stop before endgame. it´s OK to force players to be properly geared for endgame. But this means the best of Thunderholm, HH and Stormhorns, not the best from "Myth" endgame questing.

[Postumus]

What do you guys think about this ?


That is a really well thought out, well presented post with some great ideas. There is a lot there so I need to think about it a bit before responding with anything more specific. But I wish more suggestion threads started like this and not "so-and-so LIED TO US!!"

[Postumus]

Again, the main problem is one of perspective. When the vets have farmed out the endgame gear (as they did with epic gear when the cap had been lv 20) they will cry again that the game has become too easy (because of the power creep from the endgame gear).


I suspect you are correct and history has, so far, born this out.

[Seljuck]

Again, the main problem is one of perspective. When the vets have farmed out the endgame gear (as they did with epic gear when the cap had been lv 20) they will cry again that the game has become too easy (because of the power creep from the endgame gear). And most players wanting to take a shot at endgame will not be allowed to enter the quest, because they are missing the propper end game gear (whatever eSOS this will be then). But the endgame gear can only be farmed in end game, so basically the have-nots will be excluded from the endgame crowd. And there will be much crying in the forums about this. We all had this already, for quite some time, when lv. 20 was cap. Can you remember the LFM panel then, with what to bring to endgame upon entering? Actually, this is why I am so heavilly opposed to power creep end gear. Looking cool thingies that do not give special powers - any time! But giving another +2 on stats and +4 spell penetration and +20 on damage and whatever to make endgame easier for the haves is not a good idea. Powercreep should stop before endgame. it´s OK to force players to be properly geared for endgame. But this means the best of Thunderholm, HH and Stormhorns, not the best from "Myth" endgame questing.

I started my DDO career when lv cap was at 20. I do not know if there was so much cry or not. But I know that difference between heroic and epic gear was quite big. Right now we have plenty Epic gear. Introduction of new gear for ml 30 mythic content should not be a big issue, especially when new gear will NOT be stronger than current epic gear. All they have to offer, is something that can not be found in the epic items. Something that bring diversity to the game. Something that will be incentive to run new content. Just use imagination.


That is a really well thought out, well presented post with some great ideas. There is a lot there so I need to think about it a bit before responding with anything more specific. But I wish more suggestion threads started like this and not "so-and-so LIED TO US!!"

Thanks for kind words. I just wanted to start constructive talk and I hope people can share their solutions here, not just claims.

[Chai]

Again, the main problem is one of perspective. When the vets have farmed out the endgame gear (as they did with epic gear when the cap had been lv 20) they will cry again that the game has become too easy (because of the power creep from the endgame gear). And most players wanting to take a shot at endgame will not be allowed to enter the quest, because they are missing the propper end game gear (whatever eSOS this will be then). But the endgame gear can only be farmed in end game, so basically the have-nots will be excluded from the endgame crowd. And there will be much crying in the forums about this. We all had this already, for quite some time, when lv. 20 was cap. Can you remember the LFM panel then, with what to bring to endgame upon entering? Actually, this is why I am so heavilly opposed to power creep end gear. Looking cool thingies that do not give special powers - any time! But giving another +2 on stats and +4 spell penetration and +20 on damage and whatever to make endgame easier for the haves is not a good idea. Powercreep should stop before endgame. it´s OK to force players to be properly geared for endgame. But this means the best of Thunderholm, HH and Stormhorns, not the best from "Myth" endgame questing.

This game has never gated quest completion or raid completion possibility due to gear. Even back in the days of old epics, it was not needed in order to run anything else. No one needed an eSOS or an entire chronoscope suit of armor in order to run LOB for instance, which is how real "progression raiding" games would do it.

The people who tried to gate their LFMs this way were a minority, and oftentimes were hurting themselves more than helping. When I saw the known individuals who tried to use MyDDO to deny people to LFMs, instead of joining their raids, I would put up an LFM for the same run, and be more than half way done before the other group even entered. People did attempt to perpetuate the myth that gear was a hard gate in this game, but DDO has never been that tier level oriented, or absolute gear check oriented.

[Knobull]

What do you guys think about this ?

I don't have an opinion on a hypothetical "end-game" in DDO, since I just create a new character every time I hit level 20 (or sooner), but...

I just wanted to say awesome post formatting! Colored titles, ordered lists, table... nice. Very nice. Productive suggestions, good tone... 9.8/10! :cool:

[Seljuck]

I don't have an opinion on a hypothetical "end-game" in DDO, since I just create a new character every time I hit level 20 (or sooner), but...

I just wanted to say awesome post formatting! Colored titles, ordered lists, table... nice. Very nice. Productive suggestions, good tone... 9.8/10! :cool:

D**n, looks like my firm should hired me for making presentations :D So many kind words. Thanks ;]

[goodspeed]

Theirs only one way to do an end game and its through grinding. We run daily quests to grind ED xp. Reg xp for past lives heroic and iconic (mostly iconic now) We still run von 6 because we want the flippn esos shard. Not because its the be all end all, tf are close enough, better in some ways. But its because its nice and we just want the stupid thing to have.

We farm out a peice of armor because it looks nice and we want to wear it for show. Farm for tomes to be the best, farm for the best weapon (duping sorta screwed that one up along with the power creep some updates back) for the best gear situated to the specific build we make. We farm for items to upgrade that gear, otherwise *** would anyone be doing in the mark of death lol.

Without an objective, a grind their is no end game. Anything new is played, experienced, and then dropped because it has no cash/self worth or it's xp is deemed not worth the time to run. Or its such a pain in the (edit) that you just cant stand it even for the xp (coal chamber)

[Oliphant]

We currently have a double secret end game for raid timer bypass cliques. I wish there were no more bypasses BUT I also think 3 day timer is so 2010, it should be a one day timer like old epics (imo)...

[MagicBlue]

Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). How is MMO can be compared to SP cRPG??

I finished heroic content in DDO 17th times. Right now I take 1 YEAR break from heroic. So many lives was exhausting. Do you think that I would actually finish SP game, same content, so many times? I know, that I would not. Tell me did You finished any cRPG game 17th times??

You cant compare SP cRPG to MMORPG. That's two different worlds.
If u finish main plot in MMO, from Dev perspective, You must have something to do or You will quit, and MMO, especially f2p cant lose players because they reach so called END and dont have anything to do.

Pardon me, but yes, there are many people that still play SP games more than 17 times.
Reason can be whatever but mainly for fun.
And everytime can be a new experience.
DDO is introducing new classes or races simply to give one more reason to replay the same content.

Replay can be fun or not, but it's a good way to make life longer.
Every end game they can put will not be forever. A new end game will be requested.

[Nestroy]

This game has never gated quest completion or raid completion possibility due to gear. Even back in the days of old epics, it was not needed in order to run anything else. No one needed an eSOS or an entire chronoscope suit of armor in order to run LOB for instance, which is how real "progression raiding" games would do it.

The people who tried to gate their LFMs this way were a minority, and oftentimes were hurting themselves more than helping. When I saw the known individuals who tried to use MyDDO to deny people to LFMs, instead of joining their raids, I would put up an LFM for the same run, and be more than half way done before the other group even entered. People did attempt to perpetuate the myth that gear was a hard gate in this game, but DDO has never been that tier level oriented, or absolute gear check oriented.

Alas, if only one guy. I can perfectly well remember shroud runs on elite (not the old end game by any means) where the main question was "show your primary weapon" and if this has not been silver of good or something similar you just got kicked. And I can perfectly well remember epic phiarlan carneval runs where members got kicked when not bringing whole sets of epic gear or at least high end devilforged greensteel items and the like... And this has been on several servers. When House Canith Questing was new, I remember comming with magewright spectacles and got issues with several epic groups why I cannot take the much better epic googles of timesensing or any other of the epic googles... I am still loling on that - a wiz can use them magewrights much better. But whatever, they had their fun to keep me out of the group and I had my fun switching servers a few days later and have run on Wayfinder ever since. Much less elitism,

Well, as long as endgame gear is not necessarly necessary to run the end game (because it is not better than near-to endgame gear at all) they may stuff endgame with whatever the devs can think off. But just no new power creep!!!

[Angelic-council]

Very beautifully done Seljuck. I really like your idea and how organized it is.

I like the fact that you took your time to think all of this. You truly deserve some respect. Now, let's discuss the end game more further. Because this whole idea is incomplete, as you may know. End game suppose to be fun and requires some serious farming. It's designed to be played for a very long time.

Now.. I personally need to think about this more carefully, so that I won't regred it later. But, whether it's a new difficulty or super rare end game weapon. It has to be aquired in a way that makes you almost cry: means, long and difficult challenge. A lot of farming and upgrading etc. You can already see some people complaining about power creeps, and how boring it would become later. I honestly don't think you should listen to them 100% of the time, but take it to the count. Because this is a hard subject. End game is something that is updated every 3 - 4 month. And the only way to make this end game idea successful if you or anyone can come up with something that requires weeks of farming. Also, end reward has to be satisfying, worth our time :) keep it coming and good luck.

[Seljuck]

We currently have a double secret end game for raid timer bypass cliques. I wish there were no more bypasses BUT I also think 3 day timer is so 2010, it should be a one day timer like old epics (imo)...

I can't agree here. Every MMORPG have thei different approach to raid timers.

In WoW (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/15271089594) Some raids can be done 1 (ONE) time in week for example.

[HAL]

Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). How is MMO can be compared to SP cRPG??

I finished heroic content in DDO 17th times. Right now I take 1 YEAR break from heroic. So many lives was exhausting. Do you think that I would actually finish SP game, same content, so many times? I know, that I would not. Tell me did You finished any cRPG game 17th times??

You cant compare SP cRPG to MMORPG. That's two different worlds.
If u finish main plot in MMO, from Dev perspective, You must have something to do or You will quit, and MMO, especially f2p cant lose players because they reach so called END and dont have anything to do.

Most (if not all) other MMOs DO lose players because they reach the end and don't want to create another character. I have played most AAA western MMOs from EQ and a few asian MMOs as well. DDO is the exception since they introduced TR. But I think they actually made a mistake introducing TR. Sure, it kept players busy but now many players think they should be able to keep playing the same character forever. Give me more, more, more instead of understanding that every character reaches its end sooner or later.

So how do MMOs, especially F2P, stay afloat? Attracting new players. New players are what keep MMOs going. Maybe that's why DDO isn't doing so well...

[Chai]

Alas, if only one guy. I can perfectly well remember shroud runs on elite (not the old end game by any means) where the main question was "show your primary weapon" and if this has not been silver of good or something similar you just got kicked. And I can perfectly well remember epic phiarlan carneval runs where members got kicked when not bringing whole sets of epic gear or at least high end devilforged greensteel items and the like... And this has been on several servers. When House Canith Questing was new, I remember comming with magewright spectacles and got issues with several epic groups why I cannot take the much better epic googles of timesensing or any other of the epic googles... I am still loling on that - a wiz can use them magewrights much better. But whatever, they had their fun to keep me out of the group and I had my fun switching servers a few days later and have run on Wayfinder ever since. Much less elitism,

Well, as long as endgame gear is not necessarly necessary to run the end game (because it is not better than near-to endgame gear at all) they may stuff endgame with whatever the devs can think off. But just no new power creep!!!

That is a player issue and not something Turbine can code to fix unfortunately. No matter how much people behave like this is a gear check or gear score game, its not. Soon enough those people who attempted to use gear as an absolute screening tool became the "urban legends" on their server. :p

[Chai]

Most (if not all) other MMOs DO lose players because they reach the end and don't want to create another character. I have played most AAA western MMOs from EQ and a few asian MMOs as well. DDO is the exception since they introduced TR. But I think they actually made a mistake introducing TR. Sure, it kept players busy but now many players think they should be able to keep playing the same character forever. Give me more, more, more instead of understanding that every character reaches its end sooner or later.

So how do MMOs, especially F2P, stay afloat? Attracting new players. New players are what keep MMOs going. Maybe that's why DDO isn't doing so well...

How many people had maxed out gear in every slot in EQ. :p

Like 2% (Im being generous here)

I would have favored an AA system over TR system. The people who want to can still tweak their character to greater levels of power at endgame, and those who got bored can roll an alt.

[Cetus]

Yes to mythic, yes to some real endgame content for a change.

And Jotmon hit the nail on the head. You need stepping stones, not an XP stone to leap over to the big boy levels and expect the loot gods to rain the best of the best stuff down upon you.

[Cathimon]

That is a player issue and not something Turbine can code to fix unfortunately. No matter how much people behave like this is a gear check or gear score game, its not. Soon enough those people who attempted to use gear as an absolute screening tool became the "urban legends" on their server. :p

Back when Shroud was a big deal, nothing was wrong with checking if the warriors had their boss beater really. It's not elitism, it's screen for the d'bags. As a noob I remember being told to go to Jorasco get my reagent for holy sword. They allowed me in, just told me to go get the weapon.

How often have I asked people who joined my group if they had deathblock, and I got 'yes' for an answer and later found out they lied to me?

I think those are all legitimate questions and asking or demanding that your teamates bring adequate equipement for a perilous journey is more than necessary, it should be your role as party leader. It's not elitism. It's unprofessionalism and carelessness on the part of those who join. Any noob can ask questions and be prepared. I've never seen anybody refuse anybody because they did not have the best equipement, and I would be against that.

[Oliphant]

I can't agree here. Every MMORPG have thei different approach to raid timers.

In WoW (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/15271089594) Some raids can be done 1 (ONE) time in week for example.

I've never played WoW but I get the impression they have a healthy population. Our population is lower than ever it seems like on Ghallanda and I rarely see new raids posted, unlike the old days of Shroud and ToD, etc. If you reduce the timer to a 1/3 it's like tripling your population for raid eligibility purposes, pure win imo.

[Chai]

Back when Shroud was a big deal, nothing was wrong with checking if the warriors had their boss beater really. It's not elitism, it's screen for the d'bags. As a noob I remember being told to go to Jorasco get my reagent for holy sword. They allowed me in, just told me to go get the weapon.

How often have I asked people who joined my group if they had deathblock, and I got 'yes' for an answer and later found out they lied to me?

I think those are all legitimate questions and asking or demanding that your teamates bring adequate equipement for a perilous journey is more than necessary, it should be your role as party leader. It's not elitism. It's unprofessionalism and carelessness on the part of those who join. Any noob can ask questions and be prepared. I've never seen anybody refuse anybody because they did not have the best equipement, and I would be against that.

You are lucky then, because Ive seen far worse examples where people would open MyDDO and start being critical of builds split, HP, and equipped weapons. It wasn't long before the server became familiar with them and their LFMs for shroud and tod would not fill due to their expectations not matching what was needed for the content.

As for people asking questions, there were also group leaders who wouldn't take first timers to a normal shroud. That's why people just joined up and didn't ask those questions.

This isn't a game issue however, its a player issue. Sometimes I do wish player behavior could be listed as a bug and fixed in a patch, but unfortunately that's not possible. :p

[Cathimon]

You are lucky then, because Ive seen far worse examples where people would open MyDDO and start being critical of builds split, HP, and equipped weapons. It wasn't long before the server became familiar with them and their LFMs for shroud and tod would not fill due to their expectations not matching what was needed for the content.

As for people asking questions, there were also group leaders who wouldn't take first timers to a normal shroud. That's why people just joined up and didn't ask those questions.

This isn't a game issue however, its a player issue. Sometimes I do wish player behavior could be listed as a bug and fixed in a patch, but unfortunately that's not possible. :p

Meh... I don't even remember when MyDDO was last operational, and I can't say I have ever heard about a party leader examining with scrutiny a player's MyDDO for any outdated piece of equipement as a reason to kick him the f**k out of his group. I believe you none the less, but this is far from being common where I've been playing.

And besides, I don't really care. If some group of players wants to be the Navy SEAL team 6 of DDO and don't accept anybody who is one iota lower than their minimum standards, that's their problem, not mine. I'm more likely to kick you out of my group for having a stupid character name than for having subpar equipement. However, I don't like lazy and careless players.

[Monkey-Boy]

You are lucky then, because Ive seen far worse examples where people would open MyDDO and start being critical of builds split, HP, and equipped weapons. It wasn't long before the server became familiar with them and their LFMs for shroud and tod would not fill due to their expectations not matching what was needed for the content.



So what? Why should gimps have an expectation of being carried through stuff? If you couln't break DR you were piking *didn't matter much for normal, but it mattered on the higher difficulties).

The only reason this doesn't (well, rarely) happens now is the game is so easy it doesn't matter if somebody can't break DR.

I am not a destroyer of gimps. I am a liberator of them!

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that elitism -- for lack of a better word -- is good.

Elitism is right.

Elitism works.

Elitism clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Elitism, in all of its forms -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.

And elitism -- you mark my words -- will not only save DDO, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.

[HAL]

So what? Why should gimps have an expectation of being carried through stuff? If you couln't break DR you were piking *didn't matter much for normal, but it mattered on the higher difficulties).

The only reason this doesn't (well, rarely) happens now is the game is so easy it doesn't matter if somebody can't break DR.

I am not a destroyer of gimps. I am a liberator of them!

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that elitism -- for lack of a better word -- is good.

Elitism is right.

Elitism works.

Elitism clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Elitism, in all of its forms -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.

And elitism -- you mark my words -- will not only save DDO, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.

Wow, thank you so much for showing me who you really are. What server are you on and what are your characters' names? I want to add them to my "special" list.

[slarden]

So what? Why should gimps have an expectation of being carried through stuff? If you couln't break DR you were piking *didn't matter much for normal, but it mattered on the higher difficulties).

The only reason this doesn't (well, rarely) happens now is the game is so easy it doesn't matter if somebody can't break DR.

I am not a destroyer of gimps. I am a liberator of them!

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that elitism -- for lack of a better word -- is good.

Elitism is right.

Elitism works.

Elitism clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Elitism, in all of its forms -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.

And elitism -- you mark my words -- will not only save DDO, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.

Define elite. https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/453023-Monster-Champion-Feedback?p=5491959&viewfull=1#post5491959

[Monkey-Boy]

Wow, thank you so much for showing me who you really are. What server are you on and what are your characters' names? I want to add them to my "special" list.

Please tell me you've seen Wallstreet.

Seriously, a modified Gordon Geco quote goes over people's heads? Would something more contemporary have worked? I'm not sure I could have quoted anything from "Wolf of Wallstreet" without breaking some kind of forum rule.

Am I'm sorry if expecting people to break DR was too much.

[HAL]

Please tell me you've seen Wallstreet.

Seriously, a modified Gordon Geco quote goes over people's heads? Would something more contemporary have worked? I'm not sure I could have quoted anything from "Wolf of Wallstreet" without breaking some kind of forum rule.

Am I'm sorry if expecting people to break DR was too much.

Using a movie quote to express what you feel is pretty common, so what? Are you trying to say you don't actually feel that way? Because that doesn't come across. And your last sentence means that you do actually feel that way.

No, you won't tell me your info? I guess I can datamine the forums for it.

[Monkey-Boy]

Using a movie quote to express what you feel is pretty common, so what? Are you trying to say you don't actually feel that way? Because that doesn't come across. And your last sentence means that you do actually feel that way.

No, you won't tell me your info? I guess I can datamine the forums for it.

So you were/are completely fine with people piking in raids?

What are your thoughts on melees running EE MOD with less fort than needed not to be one-shotted by the deathknights? Just curious how far the sense of entitlement goes.

[HAL]

So you were/are completely fine with people piking in raids?

What are your thoughts on melees running EE MOD with less fort than needed not to be one-shotted by the deathknights? Just curious how far the sense of entitlement goes.

Lol, are you accusing me of entitlement now? You get extra points on my "special" list - grats!

My thoughts are that players can make mistakes. That's why you either join a raid that is organized, where the leader asks anyone he doesn't know if they are prepared (only for things that are actually required to survive/complete the raid like fort). Anyone who says they have enough fort and is lying goes on the Ignore list with a note.

If the raid isn't organized, you expect that there's a good chance it will go pearshaped. But I'm not going to assume anyone is doing something on purpose unless I see them do it multiple times or they lie.

[Monkey-Boy]

Lol, are you accusing me of entitlement now? You get extra points on my "special" list - grats!

My thoughts are that players can make mistakes. That's why you either join a raid that is organized, where the leader asks anyone he doesn't know if they are prepared (only for things that are actually required to survive/complete the raid like fort). Anyone who says they have enough fort and is lying goes on the Ignore list with a note.

If the raid isn't organized, you expect that there's a good chance it will go pearshaped. But I'm not going to assume anyone is doing something on purpose unless I see them do it multiple times or they lie.

So I'm the elitist because I expect people to be able to "break DR" but you'll squelch people after the fact for the same thing that people used to screen? I'd never do that, I'd just tell they what they needed and come back when they are prepared.

The fort thing's a good example not, it's I believe 190% to not get critted in EE MOD. You tell people they need this, if they don't have it and die often from getting critted you don't bring them back. Any non-idtiot will learn to have this next time.

But squelching them for that is beyond elitist, there's no non-infractable word that can describe that.

[HAL]

So I'm the elitist because I expect people to be able to "break DR" but you'll squelch people after the fact for the same thing that people used to screen? I'd never do that, I'd just tell they what they needed and come back when they are prepared.

The fort thing's a good example not, it's I believe 190% to not get critted in EE MOD. You tell people they need this, if they don't have it and die often from getting critted you don't bring them back. Any non-idtiot will learn to have this next time.

But squelching them for that is beyond elitist, there's no non-infractable word that can describe that.

I said specifically that I'd squelch them if they lied. I said if you join a raid that isn't organized (like making sure people have what they need), then you get what you get. Not sure why you are acting like I didn't say these things.

[Monkey-Boy]

I said specifically that I'd squelch them if they lied. I said if you join a raid that isn't organized (like making sure people have what they need), then you get what you get. Not sure why you are acting like I didn't say these things.

So if I'm screening for DR-breakers wouldn't that be an organized raid?

[Severlin]

Some thoughts:

~ There are some things that are clear from our datamining in multiple games and here is one of them; if the game does not occasionally offer new challenges and new rewards then players leave. This isn't power creep, but rather a planned increase in power and challenge. We call it vertical progression; an update with vertical progression will offer greater loot and also offer up larger challenges. That doesn't mean there aren't lots of opportunities for horizontal progression as well for updates that are focused on that.

~ The harder the content, the more player organizers have to pay attention to the gearing of potential adventurers. Sometimes it is the elitism of an organizer that just feels like having an easy run with geared out companions, but as the challenge of content increases it can also become more and more an issue of just being practical. If we tune content to be really hard then there will be players who are excluded because of gear. I've been there and it sucks to be excluded because you aren't geared up enough; we are sensitive to this. On the other hand making all content easy enough where gearing doesn't matter creates a game that not only lacks challenge, but also lacks any practical motivation for gearing up.

These are the types of discussions and decisions we work on all the time. The hardest part is that there is no one "correct" answer since a change that is good for one type of player could be bad for another group.

~ We talked about having a "Killer DM" difficulty level above elite that removed group scaling entirely, had an additional level of champion effects, and nudged up the damage and damage mitigation of enemies by, say, 10%. This has some challenges.

("Killer DM" is not serious, it's our internal joke way of referring to a higher difficulty.)

1.) We would now be spreading players over an additional difficulty. In the best scenario players who feel like grouping flock to this difficulty because it doesn't scale down with group size. In a worse scenario we now have players looking for groups split between Elite and Killer DM mode and it becomes harder to find groups.

2.) How do we reward players willing to run on Killer DM difficulty? Revamping all the loot in the game for a new difficulty is not an option. More loot boosts will just make items you can't use yet. We don't want to drastically increase the amount of XP players are getting as we already have players who don't feel they have enough to do. We could create a series of achievements based on completing Killer DM dungeons but would that really motivate players to participate?

3.) Would the game even be improved by a feature like this?

As you can see, these discussions bring up a lot of difficult side questions and potential consequences.

Sev~

[Blackheartox]

Some thoughts:

~ There are some things that are clear from our datamining in multiple games and here is one of them; if the game does not occasionally offer new challenges and new rewards then players leave. This isn't power creep, but rather a planned increase in power and challenge. We call it vertical progression; an update with vertical progression will offer greater loot and also offer up larger challenges. That doesn't mean there aren't lots of opportunities for horizontal progression as well for updates that are focused on that.

~ The harder the content, the more player organizers have to pay attention to the gearing of potential adventurers. Sometimes it is the elitism of an organizer that just feels like having an easy run with geared out companions, but as the challenge of content increases it can also become more and more an issue of just being practical. If we tune content to be really hard then there will be players who are excluded because of gear. I've been there and it sucks to be excluded because you aren't geared up enough; we are sensitive to this. On the other hand making all content easy enough where gearing doesn't matter creates a game that not only lacks challenge, but also lacks any practical motivation for gearing up.

These are the types of discussions and decisions we work on all the time. The hardest part is that there is no one "correct" answer since a change that is good for one type of player could be bad for another group.

~ We talked about having a "Killer DM" difficulty level above elite that removed group scaling entirely, had an additional level of champion effects, and nudged up the damage and damage mitigation of enemies by, say, 10%. This has some challenges.

("Killer DM" is not serious, it's our internal joke way of referring to a higher difficulty.)

1.) We would now be spreading players over an additional difficulty. In the best scenario players who feel like grouping flock to this difficulty because it doesn't scale down with group size. In a worse scenario we now have players looking for groups split between Elite and Killer DM mode and it becomes harder to find groups.

2.) How do we reward players willing to run on Killer DM difficulty? Revamping all the loot in the game for a new difficulty is not an option. More loot boosts will just make items you can't use yet. We don't want to drastically increase the amount of XP players are getting as we already have players who don't feel they have enough to do. We could create a series of achievements based on completing Killer DM dungeons but would that really motivate players to participate?

3.) Would the game even be improved by a feature like this?

As you can see, these discussions bring up a lot of difficult side questions and potential consequences.

Sev~

Sev i want you to look up for the player named capricorpus and his suggestion about achievments with included photoshoped ideas and a clear goal, idea and how to implement it.
For vets and for you a achivments section that acts as monster manual is the easiest option.
He was the one who inotially proposed the pc idea that gave you a very nice system that helped you guys.
He is a cery cooperative and flexible person and doesnt mind his ideas being used.
Its hard for me to find copy that specifc thread so if someone can do me the favor

[Cathimon]

Some thoughts:

~ There are some things that are clear from our datamining in multiple games and here is one of them; if the game does not occasionally offer new challenges and new rewards then players leave. This isn't power creep, but rather a planned increase in power and challenge. We call it vertical progression; an update with vertical progression will offer greater loot and also offer up larger challenges. That doesn't mean there aren't lots of opportunities for horizontal progression as well for updates that are focused on that.

~ The harder the content, the more player organizers have to pay attention to the gearing of potential adventurers. Sometimes it is the elitism of an organizer that just feels like having an easy run with geared out companions, but as the challenge of content increases it can also become more and more an issue of just being practical. If we tune content to be really hard then there will be players who are excluded because of gear. I've been there and it sucks to be excluded because you aren't geared up enough; we are sensitive to this. On the other hand making all content easy enough where gearing doesn't matter creates a game that not only lacks challenge, but also lacks any practical motivation for gearing up.

These are the types of discussions and decisions we work on all the time. The hardest part is that there is no one "correct" answer since a change that is good for one type of player could be bad for another group.

~ We talked about having a "Killer DM" difficulty level above elite that removed group scaling entirely, had an additional level of champion effects, and nudged up the damage and damage mitigation of enemies by, say, 10%. This has some challenges.

("Killer DM" is not serious, it's our internal joke way of referring to a higher difficulty.)

1.) We would now be spreading players over an additional difficulty. In the best scenario players who feel like grouping flock to this difficulty because it doesn't scale down with group size. In a worse scenario we now have players looking for groups split between Elite and Killer DM mode and it becomes harder to find groups.

2.) How do we reward players willing to run on Killer DM difficulty? Revamping all the loot in the game for a new difficulty is not an option. More loot boosts will just make items you can't use yet. We don't want to drastically increase the amount of XP players are getting as we already have players who don't feel they have enough to do. We could create a series of achievements based on completing Killer DM dungeons but would that really motivate players to participate?

3.) Would the game even be improved by a feature like this?

As you can see, these discussions bring up a lot of difficult side questions and potential consequences.

Sev~

If splitting players between difficulties is bad then why did you guys set up 4 difficulties to begin with? I am not sure this makes much sense. Unless you had for vision that every players end up on the same level, which is nonsensical. There will always be bad and good players...

But what are the players who have crushed the current content do exactly? I'm not concerned about those who feel left out as much as I am concerned about my own gaming experience and I know I could find players to accompany me on my journey to ''Killer DM'' difficulty. Right now, I'm really bored and I think you're spreading players by not giving them what they want.

[HAL]

So if I'm screening for DR-breakers wouldn't that be an organized raid?

I never objected to screening for things that are actually necessary. If you need someone to have a certain stat number, or trapping ability or DR-breaking, etc. then of course you need to screen for that. What I objected to was your "elitism is wonderful" post, and your comment about DR-breaking was part of your response about that post.

[Cathimon]

I never objected to screening for things that are actually necessary. If you need someone to have a certain stat number, or trapping ability or DR-breaking, etc. then of course you need to screen for that. What I objected to was your "elitism is wonderful" post, and your comment about DR-breaking was part of your response about that post.

Are you two even aware of the definition of elitism? I sense that people throw that word around a bit carelessly.

[Severlin]

But what are the players who have crushed the current content do exactly? I'm not concerned about those who feel left out as much as I am concerned about my own gaming experience and I know I could find players to accompany me on my journey to ''Killer DM'' difficulty. Right now, I'm really bored and I think you're spreading players by not giving them what they want.

Our next three updates should be providing meaningful content for geared out players with lots of reward options. Temple of Elemental Evil is big and will be heavily itemized. We are working hard to provide you some cool high end content to challenge you.

Sev~

[Cathimon]

Our next three updates should be providing meaningful content for geared out players with lots of reward options. Temple of Elemental Evil is big and will be heavily itemized. We are working hard to provide you some cool high end content to challenge you.

Sev~

Well, thanks for the response first and foremost and I look forward to the new content. I'd however be interested in knowing how likely or unlikely it is that we will ever see a new option for difficulty for all the current content?

[Portalcat]

3.) Would the game even be improved by a feature like this?

Emphatically, yes.

Once upon a time, there was a difficulty called "epic elite" that wiped all but the best parties at end game. It mattered for this difficulty that you had spent time collecting your past lives and gear, and you were motivated to get more because you could feel the difference that those boosts made.

Sometime in the past year, it stopped feeling like this stuff mattered when you walk into a quest on the hardest difficulty. We don't use the term "EE-capable" for good builds now, because everything is "EE-capable".


Give us a challenge to strive for and we have a reason to keep working to improve.

[Wulverine]

Our next three updates should be providing meaningful content for geared out players with lots of reward options. Temple of Elemental Evil is big and will be heavily itemized. We are working hard to provide you some cool high end content to challenge you.

Sev~

Cool high end content to challenge us != Endgame.

I hope this is clear. Because i read your post as saying, it will be high level content that people will run for 1-2weeks and then go into hibernation again.

I like the idea in the OP. A system that introduces endgame in the form of a huge reaally harrd grind, that uses content (gfx,art,questdesign) that is also enjoyable by everyone else.

Edit: And about splitting the players too thin... Plenty of players are not playing at all right now, because there is no endgame. So you'll be getting those back.

[Qhualor]

Some thoughts:

~ There are some things that are clear from our datamining in multiple games and here is one of them; if the game does not occasionally offer new challenges and new rewards then players leave. This isn't power creep, but rather a planned increase in power and challenge. We call it vertical progression; an update with vertical progression will offer greater loot and also offer up larger challenges. That doesn't mean there aren't lots of opportunities for horizontal progression as well for updates that are focused on that.

~ The harder the content, the more player organizers have to pay attention to the gearing of potential adventurers. Sometimes it is the elitism of an organizer that just feels like having an easy run with geared out companions, but as the challenge of content increases it can also become more and more an issue of just being practical. If we tune content to be really hard then there will be players who are excluded because of gear. I've been there and it sucks to be excluded because you aren't geared up enough; we are sensitive to this. On the other hand making all content easy enough where gearing doesn't matter creates a game that not only lacks challenge, but also lacks any practical motivation for gearing up.

These are the types of discussions and decisions we work on all the time. The hardest part is that there is no one "correct" answer since a change that is good for one type of player could be bad for another group.

~ We talked about having a "Killer DM" difficulty level above elite that removed group scaling entirely, had an additional level of champion effects, and nudged up the damage and damage mitigation of enemies by, say, 10%. This has some challenges.

("Killer DM" is not serious, it's our internal joke way of referring to a higher difficulty.)

1.) We would now be spreading players over an additional difficulty. In the best scenario players who feel like grouping flock to this difficulty because it doesn't scale down with group size. In a worse scenario we now have players looking for groups split between Elite and Killer DM mode and it becomes harder to find groups.

2.) How do we reward players willing to run on Killer DM difficulty? Revamping all the loot in the game for a new difficulty is not an option. More loot boosts will just make items you can't use yet. We don't want to drastically increase the amount of XP players are getting as we already have players who don't feel they have enough to do. We could create a series of achievements based on completing Killer DM dungeons but would that really motivate players to participate?

3.) Would the game even be improved by a feature like this?

As you can see, these discussions bring up a lot of difficult side questions and potential consequences.

Sev~

it looks like you get it.

this is why I think it would be better to improve the current difficulties maybe by removing scaling on elite or raise the scaling of a 4 player group to 5-6.

incentives need to properly match the difficulty setting which is why I think tiered named loot needs to make a comeback. the only real issue with tiered loot I had was the ML was not the same. things like mythic items should only drop on elite.

efficiency is something I think is problematic because for xp it can be better xp/min to run quests on norm/hard rather than getting a bigger number taking twice as long using more resources on elite. sagas was a great idea, but it still came down to some preferring normal for faster completions. named loot that drops on elite should not also drop on normal if the loot is tiered. otherwise you have the same problem like with Necro where I see a lot of players running the chain on normal and sometimes hard.

[slarden]

it looks like you get it.

this is why I think it would be better to improve the current difficulties maybe by removing scaling on elite or raise the scaling of a 4 player group to 5-6.

Yes and yes. Sev definitely understands the game more than his predecessors. Scaling should be set to 6 on elite. As long as you don't offer any elite-only rewards solo players will have to accept that Elite is meant to be a full-party challenge.

[slarden]

Our next three updates should be providing meaningful content for geared out players with lots of reward options. Temple of Elemental Evil is big and will be heavily itemized. We are working hard to provide you some cool high end content to challenge you.

Sev~

Awesome! I thought Haunted Halls was a great model in terms of loot and content. I look forward to the temple!

[Rys]

Sev i want you to look up for the player named capricorpus and his suggestion about achievments with included photoshoped ideas and a clear goal, idea and how to implement it.
For vets and for you a achivments section that acts as monster manual is the easiest option.
He was the one who inotially proposed the pc idea that gave you a very nice system that helped you guys.
He is a cery cooperative and flexible person and doesnt mind his ideas being used.
Its hard for me to find copy that specifc thread so if someone can do me the favor

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/453187-Achievements-A-Proposal

[axel15810]

Some thoughts:

~ There are some things that are clear from our datamining in multiple games and here is one of them; if the game does not occasionally offer new challenges and new rewards then players leave. This isn't power creep, but rather a planned increase in power and challenge. We call it vertical progression; an update with vertical progression will offer greater loot and also offer up larger challenges. That doesn't mean there aren't lots of opportunities for horizontal progression as well for updates that are focused on that.

~ The harder the content, the more player organizers have to pay attention to the gearing of potential adventurers. Sometimes it is the elitism of an organizer that just feels like having an easy run with geared out companions, but as the challenge of content increases it can also become more and more an issue of just being practical. If we tune content to be really hard then there will be players who are excluded because of gear. I've been there and it sucks to be excluded because you aren't geared up enough; we are sensitive to this. On the other hand making all content easy enough where gearing doesn't matter creates a game that not only lacks challenge, but also lacks any practical motivation for gearing up.

These are the types of discussions and decisions we work on all the time. The hardest part is that there is no one "correct" answer since a change that is good for one type of player could be bad for another group.

~ We talked about having a "Killer DM" difficulty level above elite that removed group scaling entirely, had an additional level of champion effects, and nudged up the damage and damage mitigation of enemies by, say, 10%. This has some challenges.

("Killer DM" is not serious, it's our internal joke way of referring to a higher difficulty.)

1.) We would now be spreading players over an additional difficulty. In the best scenario players who feel like grouping flock to this difficulty because it doesn't scale down with group size. In a worse scenario we now have players looking for groups split between Elite and Killer DM mode and it becomes harder to find groups.

2.) How do we reward players willing to run on Killer DM difficulty? Revamping all the loot in the game for a new difficulty is not an option. More loot boosts will just make items you can't use yet. We don't want to drastically increase the amount of XP players are getting as we already have players who don't feel they have enough to do. We could create a series of achievements based on completing Killer DM dungeons but would that really motivate players to participate?

3.) Would the game even be improved by a feature like this?

As you can see, these discussions bring up a lot of difficult side questions and potential consequences.

Sev~



I understand your thoughts here. But my opinion (and many others as I'm sure you've read on the forums) is DDO is clearly leaning too far in the direction of allowing too many people to complete epic elite. Not enough gearing is required. Much less gearing is required today than we had in the old epics when level 20 was cap.

We have a situation today where any player can easily acquire an almost complete set of best in slot endgame loot by running epic normal orchard. There's little reason to run the higher difficulties. The quality of those items is too low for the effort required to obtain it. There's very little motivation to gear right now and many players are bored, myself included, because there is not enough challenge. I mean heck, I am soloing non-scaling EE raids meant for 12 players right now on my battle cleric, not a top build by any means, just to get some challenge in DDO and the best weapon he has is tier 2 thunderforged.

When you threw the original champions in epic elite you were much closer to that sweet spot. Adding another difficulty even though it will exclude some players is necessary at this point. Game has gotten too easy for veteran players...and there's a lot of them.

And if you present the expectation for this difficulty as very tough initially, casual players will understand and won't get upset. Unlike when you introduced the original champions.

As for rewards on this "killer" difficulty, I'll go with the dev name for now, just give better gear with only a tiny increase in power. But you have to give some extra power or there's no reason to run the content. Lots of players don't care about anything else. Sort of like you're doing with Mythic items. That system is working well, keep it up. Make them exlusive drops to this killer difficulty in the future. But change the name from "mythic" items to something else so players don't get upset when they no longer drop in epic elite.

Make this "killer" version have an extra 8 spellpower over the regular version, or an extra 1d4 damage on a weapon. Nothing game changing that will require casual players to run those difficulties, but enough of a carrot to give vets a reason to go for them.

Also throw in other rewards such as cosmetics, creature companions, higher drop rates for stat and skill tomes. Maybe even astral shards and lesser hearts. That may be going too far though.

As for your last question, this would absolutely improve the game. Lack of difficulty is causing players to get bored and leave. It's not just a small portion of power gamers complaining about it, it's much more widespread now. A big chunk of players feel unchallenged. It needs to be addressed.

[EllisDee37]

I wouldn't mind seeing a difficulty level revamp:

- Casual goes away
- Normal stays the same
- Hard is adjusted upward to half-way between hard and elite right now (if right now hard is a "4" and elite is a "10", hard gets adjusted to "7", because that's halfway from hard to elite now)
- Elite is jacked up to Killer DM mode. At very least, remove scaling.

[Lycurgus]

Some thoughts:

2.) How do we reward players willing to run on Killer DM difficulty? Revamping all the loot in the game for a new difficulty is not an option. More loot boosts will just make items you can't use yet. We don't want to drastically increase the amount of XP players are getting as we already have players who don't feel they have enough to do. We could create a series of achievements based on completing Killer DM dungeons but would that really motivate players to participate?

3.) Would the game even be improved by a feature like this?

As you can see, these discussions bring up a lot of difficult side questions and potential consequences.

Sev~

Add new rewards including tokens for extra character slots, more bank space, purchased races and classes, guest passes, extremely rare tokens for otto's boxes. The idea would be to provide incentive to start a new character or to invite a friend to try the game out without adding to power creep.

[HAL]

If splitting players between difficulties is bad then why did you guys set up 4 difficulties to begin with? I am not sure this makes much sense. Unless you had for vision that every players end up on the same level, which is nonsensical. There will always be bad and good players...

But what are the players who have crushed the current content do exactly? I'm not concerned about those who feel left out as much as I am concerned about my own gaming experience and I know I could find players to accompany me on my journey to ''Killer DM'' difficulty. Right now, I'm really bored and I think you're spreading players by not giving them what they want.

Splitting is probably a matter of degrees.

[Severlin]

Cool high end content to challenge us != Endgame.

I hope this is clear. Because i read your post as saying, it will be high level content that people will run for 1-2weeks and then go into hibernation again.

I like the idea in the OP. A system that introduces endgame in the form of a huge reaally harrd grind, that uses content (gfx,art,questdesign) that is also enjoyable by everyone else.

Edit: And about splitting the players too thin... Plenty of players are not playing at all right now, because there is no endgame. So you'll be getting those back.

I would say that it will be hard to finish ToEE itemization in 1-2 weeks but you know some ultra-motivated players would prove me wrong. Let me say that the design for the ToEE itemization is designed to take longer than that.

Sev~

[Connman]

I would say that it will be hard to finish ToEE itemization in 1-2 weeks but you know some ultra-motivated players would prove me wrong. Let me say that the design for the ToEE itemization is designed to take longer than that.

Sev~

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/ah42/bc7902098/famous-characters-troll-face-challenge-accepted-256559_zps658f3483.jpg

[letour]

I agree that the old epic s/s/s items should get this treatment, or something like it.

While the level 30 quests/end game will no doubt need tougher opponents, I would still prefer to see player power dialed back, rather than just powering up our opponents.

I 100% agree with you.

[Nestroy]

(...)
~ We talked about having a "Killer DM" difficulty level above elite that removed group scaling entirely, had an additional level of champion effects, and nudged up the damage and damage mitigation of enemies by, say, 10%. This has some challenges.

("Killer DM" is not serious, it's our internal joke way of referring to a higher difficulty.)

1.) We would now be spreading players over an additional difficulty. In the best scenario players who feel like grouping flock to this difficulty because it doesn't scale down with group size. In a worse scenario we now have players looking for groups split between Elite and Killer DM mode and it becomes harder to find groups.

2.) How do we reward players willing to run on Killer DM difficulty? Revamping all the loot in the game for a new difficulty is not an option. More loot boosts will just make items you can't use yet. We don't want to drastically increase the amount of XP players are getting as we already have players who don't feel they have enough to do. We could create a series of achievements based on completing Killer DM dungeons but would that really motivate players to participate?

3.) Would the game even be improved by a feature like this?

As you can see, these discussions bring up a lot of difficult side questions and potential consequences.

Sev~

How to reward players for killer DM mode? Easy - giving marginally better loot chances than regular (elite) content, for the same elite items and give extra tokens of accomplishement that give a toon some bragging rights or cosmetic changes, but no new and better powers. The main purpose for any player to play killer DM mode should be accomplishement, not more power to the toon.

The main problem: You need a certain power level to run killer DM mode. You get more power there, trivializing the mode for those farming power in said mode. Newbies cannot easily enter that mode, and vets after a while will complaint that the mode again is too easy. Solution? No better powers farmable thru the killer DM mode. Only either better loot chances for regular loot or just the cosmetic hat of accomplishement that shows everybody the toon did survive a quest in killer DM mode.

[janave]

I do not believe good itemization will alone fix the grouping problems, please have a look at very dated content that is still in the common rotation, please make all content as much inclusive as possible, rather than exlusive so that it unites those who are still playing vs separating them into even smaller camps.

A simple question to ask before you make a decision, "will it make people openly want to group"? or does is promote static grouping and elitist/exclusive gameplay.

Good itemization is certainly a huge draw, looking at the Shroud, and good xp will give "eternal" life to the content, looking at epic Vault of Night. Any day i play i see groups for these raids, they are highly inclusive and will live as long as DDO.

[Seljuck]

I would say that it will be hard to finish ToEE itemization in 1-2 weeks but you know some ultra-motivated players would prove me wrong. Let me say that the design for the ToEE itemization is designed to take longer than that.

Sev~

That's realy good news. Thank You for that.

To address Your earlier post. I dont think that splitting players between the levels of difficulty will be something game breaking. Like someone said, when you developed MotU there was huge difference between difficulties. Some people was upset, other was happy. In general, You already split players when you changed EPIC difficulty to N/H/E. Giving player base one more difficulty, that could be entered only by caped characters wont split players much more.

[Monkey-Boy]

2.) How do we reward players willing to run on Killer DM difficulty? Revamping all the loot in the game for a new difficulty is not an option. More loot boosts will just make items you can't use yet. We don't want to drastically increase the amount of XP players are getting as we already have players who don't feel they have enough to do. We could create a series of achievements based on completing Killer DM dungeons but would that really motivate players to participate?

Sev~

Titles of nobility. Running these quests level up that which is used for peen measuring and nothing more.

have the quests offer ZERO XP, it's not for leveling.

[Braegan]

Yes and yes. Sev definitely understands the game more than his predecessors. Scaling should be set to 6 on elite. As long as you don't offer any elite-only rewards solo players will have to accept that Elite is meant to be a full-party challenge.

I am fine with some Elite only rewards. There needs to be some real incentive. That said if it's done on a small scale it shouldn't really affect causal players but would make min maxers run it until they got the perfect set up. Think like how EGH items would mostly just have a different color augment slot or EN-EE Shadowsight offered a bonus of +9-+11. A single bracket raise in DC will not make or break a casual player, but it will make a min maxer run EE until they get that last elusive point.

[Wizza]

Some thoughts:

~ There are some things that are clear from our datamining in multiple games and here is one of them; if the game does not occasionally offer new challenges and new rewards then players leave. This isn't power creep, but rather a planned increase in power and challenge. We call it vertical progression; an update with vertical progression will offer greater loot and also offer up larger challenges. That doesn't mean there aren't lots of opportunities for horizontal progression as well for updates that are focused on that.

~ The harder the content, the more player organizers have to pay attention to the gearing of potential adventurers. Sometimes it is the elitism of an organizer that just feels like having an easy run with geared out companions, but as the challenge of content increases it can also become more and more an issue of just being practical. If we tune content to be really hard then there will be players who are excluded because of gear. I've been there and it sucks to be excluded because you aren't geared up enough; we are sensitive to this. On the other hand making all content easy enough where gearing doesn't matter creates a game that not only lacks challenge, but also lacks any practical motivation for gearing up.

These are the types of discussions and decisions we work on all the time. The hardest part is that there is no one "correct" answer since a change that is good for one type of player could be bad for another group.

~ We talked about having a "Killer DM" difficulty level above elite that removed group scaling entirely, had an additional level of champion effects, and nudged up the damage and damage mitigation of enemies by, say, 10%. This has some challenges.


Why are you going through all this trouble to make the game more difficult? Just tweak the Elite difficulty to be whatever you have in mind for the "Killer DM" and done. We don't need any new difficulty, just proper rewards and proper challenge. But to proper challenge us, you need to nerf us. You say that in this Killer difficulty, you want to give the mobs more damage and more damage mitigation: why CAN'T YOU JUST ADMIT THAT THE PRR/MRR FORMULA WAS A MISTAKE and THE NERF IT, BY A LITTLE AT LEAST?

You keep wanting to fix YOUR MISTAKES with NEW WRONG MECHANICS (Champions first, now ANOTHER difficulty). Admit your errors and take your responsabilities for them AND FIX THE ERRORS THEMSELVES.


Our next three updates should be providing meaningful content for geared out players with lots of reward options. Temple of Elemental Evil is big and will be heavily itemized. We are working hard to provide you some cool high end content to challenge you.

Sev~

Yeah, you (you = Turbine) have been saying this for every update and yet, at every update, the previous content gets outdated.

[Seljuck]

I do not believe good itemization will alone fix the grouping problems, please have a look at very dated content that is still in the common rotation, please make all content as much inclusive as possible, rather than exlusive so that it unites those who are still playing vs separating them into even smaller camps.

A simple question to ask before you make a decision, "will it make people openly want to group"? or does is promote static grouping and elitist/exclusive gameplay.

Good itemization is certainly a huge draw, looking at the Shroud, and good xp will give "eternal" life to the content, looking at epic Vault of Night. Any day i play i see groups for these raids, they are highly inclusive and will live as long as DDO.

This Is something I agree, that Devs should promote. Grouping lies at the root of D&D. Anything from quest design to new events should promote grouping. New difficulty, from which I started was thought at this angle.

[HAL]

That's realy good news. Thank You for that.

To address Your earlier post. I dont think that splitting players between the levels of difficulty will be something game breaking. Like someone said, when you developed MotU there was huge difference between difficulties. Some people was upset, other was happy. In general, You already split players when you changed EPIC difficulty to N/H/E. Giving player base one more difficulty, that could be entered only by caped characters wont split players much more.

I'm curious what you mean by capped characters since an additional difficulty would cover multiple levels? Did you mean geared characters? If yes, how do you enforce only certain characters entering a quest? In general people don't like gated content.

[Monkey-Boy]

I'm curious what you mean by capped characters since an additional difficulty would cover multiple levels? Did you mean geared characters? If yes, how do you enforce only certain characters entering a quest? In general people don't like gated content.

Not if they make it like old epics where everything was level 25, make all in the "mythic difficulty" level 35/40 or whatever arbitrary number.

Don't have it give XP so people don't try to use it to level.

[Nestroy]

Why are you going through all this trouble to make the game more difficult? Just tweak the Elite difficulty to be whatever you have in mind for the "Killer DM" and done. We don't need any new difficulty, just proper rewards and proper challenge. But to proper challenge us, you need to nerf us. You say that in this Killer difficulty, you want to give the mobs more damage and more damage mitigation: why CAN'T YOU JUST ADMIT THAT THE PRR/MRR FORMULA WAS A MISTAKE and THE NERF IT, BY A LITTLE AT LEAST?

You keep wanting to fix YOUR MISTAKES with NEW WRONG MECHANICS (Champions first, now ANOTHER difficulty). Admit your errors and take your responsabilities for them AND FIX THE ERRORS THEMSELVES.



Yeah, you (you = Turbine) have been saying this for every update and yet, at every update, the previous content gets outdated.

Elite is needed for favor, XP and elite loot. Alas, making it harder will just widen the gap between those that already have all and everything and those that do not.

This is especially true for heroics, but when thinking of eGH, eWheelon and eStormhorns, the elite loot sometimes is a necessety to build the best builds - so yes, elite has to be played by quite a lot of players and therefore cannot be done for the upper 10% only. Therefore the idea of an extra difficulty.

By the way, I would scrap Casual in favor of such a killer DM mode difficulty.

[salmag]

I haven't read the entire thread so please forgive me if this was covered.

I feel they should have handled "end game" as follows:

The Devs should have finished off Eberron before adding the FR setting.
Level up to thirty.
Grind until you get the weapon you want/need.
Add FR setting as a new starting point.
Import Eberron capped character with armor and one weapon only, they start at level 1. (or start new character from scratch).
Level up to thirty.
Grind until you get the weapons you want/need.
Add Dark Sun setting as a new starting point
(rinse repeat).
Add Greyhawk setting.
(rinse repeat).
Add Ravenloft.
(rinse repeat).
Add Planescape.
(rinse repeat).

That would be my vision for DDO.

Forgotten Realms expansion should have been added after Eberron was completed.

That should have been "end (new) game."

[Seljuck]

I'm curious what you mean by capped characters since an additional difficulty would cover multiple levels? Did you mean geared characters? If yes, how do you enforce only certain characters entering a quest? In general people don't like gated content.

I mean characters at 30th Lv. No one with lower level will be allowed to enter that diff. Just like 'Old Epics'

[Braegan]

Elite is needed for favor, XP and elite loot. Alas, making it harder will just widen the gap between those that already have all and everything and those that do not.

This is especially true for heroics, but when thinking of eGH, eWheelon and eStormhorns, the elite loot sometimes is a necessety to build the best builds - so yes, elite has to be played by quite a lot of players and therefore cannot be done for the upper 10% only. Therefore the idea of an extra difficulty.

By the way, I would scrap Casual in favor of such a killer DM mode difficulty.

I see this brought up a lot and I disagree.

Favor: What favor is needed that you wouldn't be able to get running hard or a heroic version of Elite on an Epic character? I really can't think of a single one.

XP: A Fallacy. Chai recently demonstrated a once and done hard streak to cap a 3rd lifer. For Epics, lol? You could run EN Spies/Wiz King and Von3 to cap if you desired. EE XP is not needed to cap.

Elite loot: Again if it is scaled to be minor increases of power it is a non issue. My EE +11 stat item vs that casual players +9 stat item = 1 point of DC. If 1 point of DC makes or breaks any build, then that build was flawed to begin with. EE Loot should be a small bit better to provide another layer of incentive and occasional pride in a new shiny.

[UurlockYgmeov]

Our next three updates should be providing meaningful content for geared out players with lots of reward options. Temple of Elemental Evil is big and will be heavily itemized. We are working hard to provide you some cool high end content to challenge you.

Sev~

*drool*

[UurlockYgmeov]

I would say that it will be hard to finish ToEE itemization in 1-2 weeks but you know some ultra-motivated players would prove me wrong. Let me say that the design for the ToEE itemization is designed to take longer than that.

Sev~

I hope I am not reading this right - but not another crafting system. (unless it just uses champion chunks and nothing else to upgrade the gear)

[Oxarhamar]

Awesome! I thought Haunted Halls was a great model in terms of loot and content. I look forward to the temple!

Haunts Halls was almost great.

The only short coming was that it was only 3 versions of 1 quest with loot goodies tied to 3 optional fights.

It could have been much more with some side quests to explore the rest of the halls more than once.
Some named loot tied to other optionals etc.


I have higher hopes for ToEE from what I've heard so far.

[Oxarhamar]

I hope I am not reading this right - but not another crafting system. (unless it just uses champion chunks and nothing else to upgrade the gear)

I'll go opposite of that.

Give us any crafting system that does not use the Champions chunks!

Items should be upgraded with ingredients that come for the same chain or pack to best give the pack longevity.

Run the pack for the item, run the pack to upgrade.

[Oxarhamar]

I see this brought up a lot and I disagree.

Favor: What favor is needed that you wouldn't be able to get running hard or a heroic version of Elite on an Epic character? I really can't think of a single one.

XP: A Fallacy. Chai recently demonstrated a once and done hard streak to cap a 3rd lifer. For Epics, lol? You could run EN Spies/Wiz King and Von3 to cap if you desired. EE XP is not needed to cap.

Elite loot: Again if it is scaled to be minor increases of power it is a non issue. My EE +11 stat item vs that casual players +9 stat item = 1 point of DC. If 1 point of DC makes or breaks any build, then that build was flawed to begin with. EE Loot should be a small bit better to provide another layer of incentive and occasional pride in a new shiny.

EE is garbage in comparison to EN time & resources vs. return. EN is where the XP is at. Outside of an Elite streak of course.

Maybe in Heroics Elite streak is the way to go but, once your streak is gone in epics repeating elite is garbage.

[Wizza]

Elite is needed for favor, XP and elite loot. Alas, making it harder will just widen the gap between those that already have all and everything and those that do not.

This is especially true for heroics, but when thinking of eGH, eWheelon and eStormhorns, the elite loot sometimes is a necessety to build the best builds - so yes, elite has to be played by quite a lot of players and therefore cannot be done for the upper 10% only. Therefore the idea of an extra difficulty.

By the way, I would scrap Casual in favor of such a killer DM mode difficulty.

So, Elite is useless at the moment (XP, Favor? useless to endgamers) so we need a new difficulty? Upping Elite difficulty, instead of making a new difficulty, would just widen gap? Color me impressed with this logic.

Make Hard the Elite we have now (maybe a slightly bit easier), make the killer DM the new Elite and done, still 3 difficulties, we will have the new Elite loot and people who want to run the old elite can run Hard.

[Rys]

Elite is needed for favor, XP and elite loot. Alas, making it harder will just widen the gap between those that already have all and everything and those that do not.

This is especially true for heroics, but when thinking of eGH, eWheelon and eStormhorns, the elite loot sometimes is a necessety to build the best builds - so yes, elite has to be played by quite a lot of players and therefore cannot be done for the upper 10% only. Therefore the idea of an extra difficulty.

By the way, I would scrap Casual in favor of such a killer DM mode difficulty.

There are 4 different difficulties. Why oh why should the highest one be the default one? The things you named should have been the rewards not the matter of course. Unfortunately the ship has sailed already because they havent been able to synchronise the release of powercreep and difficulty scaling. I really really hope that the new content will be difficult from the start.

[Blackheartox]

So, Elite is useless at the moment (XP, Favor? useless to endgamers) so we need a new difficulty? Upping Elite difficulty, instead of making a new difficulty, would just widen gap? Color me impressed with this logic.

Make Hard the Elite we have now (maybe a slightly bit easier), make the killer DM the new Elite and done, still 3 difficulties, we will have the new Elite loot and people who want to run the old elite can run Hard.

People in this game think they deserve to complete elite content without any effort for maximum favor.
I dont want to play better or create better builds but the game should be easier so tht i can get max favor and keep my streak.
That is what bb free tp from favor and player who feel entitled they deserve that as good players do hybridly do to kill challenge and fun ddo provides.

Destroy bb destroy favor and viola.

They should add a mechanic that gves you max favor when you run the quest on normal 10 times so that elite players can have elite and normal players normal.
Do that and destroy bb and viola.
Then you can make elite fun again without the favor and bb cards usage

[Severlin]

Why are you going through all this trouble to make the game more difficult? Just tweak the Elite difficulty to be whatever you have in mind for the "Killer DM" and done. We don't need any new difficulty, just proper rewards and proper challenge. But to proper challenge us, you need to nerf us. You say that in this Killer difficulty, you want to give the mobs more damage and more damage mitigation: why CAN'T YOU JUST ADMIT THAT THE PRR/MRR FORMULA WAS A MISTAKE and THE NERF IT, BY A LITTLE AT LEAST?

You keep wanting to fix YOUR MISTAKES with NEW WRONG MECHANICS (Champions first, now ANOTHER difficulty). Admit your errors and take your responsabilities for them AND FIX THE ERRORS THEMSELVES.


Champions is more about replayability than difficulty, and honestly we are pretty happy with Champions. Our datamining is showing that people are engaging in the system.

For armor and PRR/MRR, the base armor values were not changed to 10/20/30 for light/medium/heavy when the formula changed to be more effective, so heavy armor offers a bit too much PRR.

(Also, you don't need to use all caps.)



Yeah, you (you = Turbine) have been saying this for every update and yet, at every update, the previous content gets outdated.

Part of the reality of vertical progression is that older content is no longer endgame and becomes part of the leveling and TR process. Sometimes it is hard because players become comfortable with that old content. You are correct, though, that the reality of new and exciting content - especially content with vertical progression - it that older content is less new and exciting.

Sev~

[Monkey-Boy]

For armor and PRR/MRR, the base armor values were not changed to 10/20/30 for light/medium/heavy when the formula changed to be more effective, so heavy armor offers a bit too much PRR.

Sev~

Do we see a nerf coming in the future or is it just the new normal?

Frankly, I think the game was more broken when armor was worthless. We're not playing Stormtroopers.

[Severlin]

Do we see a nerf coming in the future or is it just the new normal?

Frankly, I think the game was more broken when armor was worthless. We're not playing Stormtroopers.

We don't want to go back to a place where armor is worthless. Part of the problem is that Evasion is just so good; but even with Evasion the overall mitigation of heavy armor is really strong.

My current plan is that this topic will be one of the first discussions with the new player's council.

Sev~

[Edwinge]

Personally, I'd be fine with the addition of a new difficulty setting that is harder, as long as it doesn't feel mandatory. By that same logic, I am opposed to making elite harder than it currently is. Right now, elite feels mandatory to me. Bravery bonuses and having to run elite at least once to get max favor are both part of why it feels that way. If I could get full favor from running hard I would probably never run on elite.


2.) How do we reward players willing to run on Killer DM difficulty? Revamping all the loot in the game for a new difficulty is not an option. More loot boosts will just make items you can't use yet. We don't want to drastically increase the amount of XP players are getting as we already have players who don't feel they have enough to do. We could create a series of achievements based on completing Killer DM dungeons but would that really motivate players to participate?

As for rewards for a new killer difficulty setting, make it so that all the random loot has masterful craftsmanship by default with a chance to have wondrous craftsmanship instead (maybe equal to the current chance for random loot to have masterful craftsmanship). This would make the random gear better without upping it's minimum level. You could even add a third tier of that property that has a rare chance of being found in the killer setting.

[Rys]

Champions is more about replayability than difficulty, and honestly we are pretty happy with Champions. Our datamining is showing that people are engaging in the system.

For armor and PRR/MRR, the base armor values were not changed to 10/20/30 for light/medium/heavy when the formula changed to be more effective, so heavy armor offers a bit too much PRR.

(Also, you don't need to use all caps.)



Part of the reality of vertical progression is that older content is no longer endgame and becomes part of the leveling and TR process. Sometimes it is hard because players become comfortable with that old content. You are correct, though, that the reality of new and exciting content - especially content with vertical progression - it that older content is less new and exciting.

Sev~
You could be a great politician :)

[Mryal]

We don't want to go back to a place where armor is worthless. Part of the problem is that Evasion is just so good; but even with Evasion the overall mitigation of heavy armor is really strong.

My current plan is that this topic will be one of the first discussions with the new player's council.

Sev~

Your mistake is comparing a system that is min/max (evasion, not enough save = full damage or 50%) and that works against ONE type of attack (reflex based spells and traps) VS a system that works vs pretty much everything and that gives you benefit regardless of how much you've spent on it.

Back when you guys first concieved the MRR changes, first thing i pointed was : MRR will protect you VS fort save based spells, evasion wont.That alone will alredy justify mostly everyone moving from evasion setup to MRR setup.That alone is alredy way better.What happens now? The Endgame raids have casters that spam Disintegrate like effects, and evasion based solid builds are beign obliterated several times in sucession, wich has caused all of my guild to abandom evasion based builds or build second characters just to circunvent that.

[dunklezhan]

We don't want to go back to a place where armor is worthless. Part of the problem is that Evasion is just so good; but even with Evasion the overall mitigation of heavy armor is really strong.

My current plan is that this topic will be one of the first discussions with the new player's council.

Sev~

Would it work if medium armours could be given passive effects instead, as the middle ground? E.g. maybe medium armour adds a stacking 1% fort per enhancement bonus or +1 bonus damage to all retributive effects per enhancement bonus, or something like that? Or have medium still block evasion but increase it's dex/skill cap equivalents to light armour ranges? Or just straight out have certain effects - maybe shiny new effects - that can only appear on medium? So light and cloth still get evasion and better ASF, heavy gets all that lovely straight out direct damage mitigation, and middle gets other, perhaps situational or tactical advantages?

[Monkey-Boy]

We don't want to go back to a place where armor is worthless. Part of the problem is that Evasion is just so good; but even with Evasion the overall mitigation of heavy armor is really strong.

My current plan is that this topic will be one of the first discussions with the new player's council.

Sev~

I think making the capstones as insanely strong as you did with the last couple of classes that got revamped has made evasion not nearly as sexy as it was before.

[Gremmlynn]

efficiency is something I think is problematic because for xp it can be better xp/min to run quests on norm/hard rather than getting a bigger number taking twice as long using more resources on elite. sagas was a great idea, but it still came down to some preferring normal for faster completions. named loot that drops on elite should not also drop on normal if the loot is tiered. otherwise you have the same problem like with Necro where I see a lot of players running the chain on normal and sometimes hard.You make it sound like there is something wrong with some players preferring normal?

[DarthCaedus]

We don't want to go back to a place where armor is worthless. Part of the problem is that Evasion is just so good; but even with Evasion the overall mitigation of heavy armor is really strong.

My current plan is that this topic will be one of the first discussions with the new player's council.

Sev~

I would rank heavy armor above evasion in the current state of the game. It's not really close.

[Wizza]

We don't want to go back to a place where armor is worthless. Part of the problem is that Evasion is just so good; but even with Evasion the overall mitigation of heavy armor is really strong.

My current plan is that this topic will be one of the first discussions with the new player's council.

Sev~

People need no Evasion with 150 PRR and over 50 MRR. Besides, magical damage can be mitigated in many, many ways.

[Krelar]

I would rank heavy armor above evasion in the current state of the game. It's not really close.

Maybe if you're comparing light/ no armor evasion to heavy armor with greater defender stance.

Personally I've found light armor + evasion + basic defender stance to be superior to heavy armor without defender stance and about on par with heavy armor + greater defender stance. Provided you can get a high reflex save of course.

[Samir_Bennal]

I'm not concerned about those who feel left out as much as I am concerned about my own gaming experience.

Unfortunately, it's seeing comments like this that cause me to play solo way more than I desire. The game is designed for team play. If I team with people I want to enjoy myself but also help the others enjoy the game as well.

[Gremmlynn]

I wouldn't mind seeing a difficulty level revamp:

- Casual goes away
- Normal stays the same
- Hard is adjusted upward to half-way between hard and elite right now (if right now hard is a "4" and elite is a "10", hard gets adjusted to "7", because that's halfway from hard to elite now)
- Elite is jacked up to Killer DM mode. At very least, remove scaling.One question.

Why would you have casual go away?

I ask because, unless you see it having some sort of negative effect on the game, even a small amount of effort spent removing it seems wasted.

[R1ncewind]

Part of the reality of vertical progression is that older content is no longer endgame and becomes part of the leveling and TR process. Sometimes it is hard because players become comfortable with that old content. You are correct, though, that the reality of new and exciting content - especially content with vertical progression - it that older content is less new and exciting.

Sev~

My problem Sev is not with vertical progression on it own, the problem is when its happens to fast ( first expansion) or destroy the Tr named item economy ( second expansion with the powercreep of random loot), named loot its suppose to be better than most random items at level ( i know some mix can and should be interesting enough to compete with named items, the problem is that the modifications to random loot destroyed that premise, making a lot of low content (heroic) useless for exp and loot, or what you called in a post some time ago, horizontal progression, you destroy that and its seems we are not going to take that back, and i know that is something old players dont care about because who stay in a level more than 1 or 2 hour right?... well new players do, and when you take away the excitement of new named shinny loot you take away some or a lot of the appealing of the new game they are trying...
and i know im off topic but since i know you are paying attention...)

and yes yes, this may have something to do with the election of the new shinny PC... but look the other way around ;)

[Oxarhamar]

One question.

Why would you have casual go away?

I ask because, unless you see it having some sort of negative effect on the game, even a small amount of effort spent removing it seems wasted.

The question really is how often is it used?

[Cathimon]

Unfortunately, it's seeing comments like this that cause me to play solo way more than I desire. The game is designed for team play. If I team with people I want to enjoy myself but also help the others enjoy the game as well.

What's causing me to solo is the absolutly no need for teamates because I can crush most content on my own. I'd like to go back to the old DDO when we had to actually team up and help one an other. When we had a trapper for traps, a buffer for buffs, a mage to cast fireballs and solve int runes, that kind of stuff. That's why I want the game to be harder, so we have to team up.

What I meant is that I'm not concerned about the players who want the game to remain as easy as it is now, with access to loot and fast xp. Those people can go play WoW for all I care.

[Cathimon]

Well, thanks for the response first and foremost and I look forward to the new content. I'd however be interested in knowing how likely or unlikely it is that we will ever see a new option for difficulty for all the current content?

Severlin, any chance you can answer this?

[kmankowski]

The question really is how often is it used?

I know a few kids who use the Casual setting, and their parents spend money on the game. So it makes Turbine at least a little bit of money.

[Samir_Bennal]

I'd like to go back to the old DDO when we had to actually team up and help one an other. When we had a trapper for traps, a buffer for buffs, a mage to cast fireballs and solve int runes, that kind of stuff. That's why I want the game to be harder, so we have to team up.



Now this I remember and can relate to.

[Oxarhamar]

What's causing me to solo is the absolutly no need for teamates because I can crush most content on my own. I'd like to go back to the old DDO when we had to actually team up and help one an other. When we had a trapper for traps, a buffer for buffs, a mage to cast fireballs and solve int runes, that kind of stuff. That's why I want the game to be harder, so we have to team up.

What I meant is that I'm not concerned about the players who want the game to remain as easy as it is now, with access to loot and fast xp. Those people can go play WoW for all I care.

Only the removal of scaling can fix that making soloing the lowest difficulty encourages soloing.

[Qhualor]

You make it sound like there is something wrong with some players preferring normal?

when elite/hard players prefer it over elite/hard because its faster and more efficient, yes. that should throw some red flags up.

[Angelic-council]

Killer DM sounds interesting. But once again, end game is something that specifically designed to be played for a long term. Higher difficulty would most likely cover its "fun" part. However, this new end game farming process has to be well thought. Next update "Tower of Elemental Evil" would be a big one, and there are 2 if not 3 more updates to follow. I'm pretty sure that turbine is planning for something - attractive.

The real question is, because this game is really complexed and there are huge cap between classes. How could developers introduce something that is "perfect challenge" and reward everyone who worked hard for it. I mean, you can do pretty much whatever you want in DDO. That's the beauty of this game, but, there has to be more than just "I think this idea is cool, so let's implement it".

[Blackheartox]

What's causing me to solo is the absolutly no need for teamates because I can crush most content on my own. I'd like to go back to the old DDO when we had to actually team up and help one an other. When we had a trapper for traps, a buffer for buffs, a mage to cast fireballs and solve int runes, that kind of stuff. That's why I want the game to be harder, so we have to team up.

What I meant is that I'm not concerned about the players who want the game to remain as easy as it is now, with access to loot and fast xp. Those people can go play WoW for all I care.

Sad to tell you this bu wow is mechanically, contnt wise and skill wise way way harder then ddo is now.
Some raids in wow are harder and demanding then a solo eh mark of death or hmm dualbox 2 seperate ee qgu soloes ar same time while playing at same time.

Ddo in its current state is a disapointment to anyone who grew up on dnd

[Oxarhamar]

when elite/hard players prefer it over elite/hard because its faster and more efficient, yes. that should throw some red flags up.

Agreed

[Qhualor]

Would it work if medium armours could be given passive effects instead, as the middle ground? E.g. maybe medium armour adds a stacking 1% fort per enhancement bonus or +1 bonus damage to all retributive effects per enhancement bonus, or something like that? Or have medium still block evasion but increase it's dex/skill cap equivalents to light armour ranges? Or just straight out have certain effects - maybe shiny new effects - that can only appear on medium? So light and cloth still get evasion and better ASF, heavy gets all that lovely straight out direct damage mitigation, and middle gets other, perhaps situational or tactical advantages?

I would rather see dodge chance be increased for medium and light armor. light would have the highest chance, but lowest PRR and MRR. medium would have a little more PRR and MRR with a little less dodge chance. thematically, what classes would normally wear medium or light armor? classes that normally would benefit more from dodge like rangers, rogues, monks, barbs, druids. have dodge on the same scale as heavy armor and I believe their would be a better balance.

[Gremmlynn]

A simple question to ask before you make a decision, "will it make people openly want to group"? or does is promote static grouping and elitist/exclusive gameplay.What sort of things do you think would make people openly WANT to group?

Because, maybe it's just me but, I can't think of anything that would make me want to pug with strangers over running with people I know. Even the social aspect is generally more superficial as one never knows what might put anyone else off, or worse it's not and we all end up running with people we find off putting.

[Oxarhamar]

Sad to tell you this bu wow is mechanically, contnt wise and skill wise way way harder then ddo is now.
Some raids in wow are harder and demanding then a solo eh mark of death or hmm dualbox 2 seperate ee qgu soloes ar same time while playing at same time.

Ddo in its current state is a disapointment to anyone who grew up on dnd

Meh I'm hearing the same thing from WoW players, too easy now dumbed down!

The producers don't care if the make things that work in PVE which completely break PVP for a game with such large focus on PVP that's lame.


I wouldn't know first had as I preordered WoW on initial release capped in 2 months & quit.

[Qhualor]

What sort of things do you think would make people openly WANT to group?

Because, maybe it's just me but, I can't think of anything that would make me want to pug with strangers over running with people I know. Even the social aspect is generally more superficial as one never knows what might put anyone else off, or worse it's not and we all end up running with people we find off putting.

currently, the only time I really see people being exclusive is for EE newer raids or because they have a static group already. the current state of the game overall isn't that difficult where you need to "link your green steel weapon". its more you on how you are able to deal with random people. if Sev were to make the game more challenging so it was "forced grouping" on elite, than those that have issues with random people would most likely go with static grouping instead of just throwing up an "IP" lfm and soloing or shortmanning like is commonly seen now.

[Nestroy]

I see this brought up a lot and I disagree.

Favor: What favor is needed that you wouldn't be able to get running hard or a heroic version of Elite on an Epic character? I really can't think of a single one.

XP: A Fallacy. Chai recently demonstrated a once and done hard streak to cap a 3rd lifer. For Epics, lol? You could run EN Spies/Wiz King and Von3 to cap if you desired. EE XP is not needed to cap.

Elite loot: Again if it is scaled to be minor increases of power it is a non issue. My EE +11 stat item vs that casual players +9 stat item = 1 point of DC. If 1 point of DC makes or breaks any build, then that build was flawed to begin with. EE Loot should be a small bit better to provide another layer of incentive and occasional pride in a new shiny.

What you say might hold true for EE on a lv. 28 caped toon. Otherwise it is just plain wrong.

Favor - heroic elite is supposed to be played on level, meaning toons w/o EDs. What is the point being coerced to run lv. 17 heroic quests (lv. 19 on elite) on a lv. 20 toon with full EDs just to be barely able to make the quest (e.g. Terminal Delirium)? This is pointless. Then there are quite a fw quests meanwhile where there is no heroic quest, only elite. You do not get much PDK and Harper favor by running heroics alone, you know?

XP - what is the point of EE giving any Xp at all when EE is supposed to be run with lv. 28 capped toons? What is EE from a lv. 21 quest? On paper it is lv. 23. What is the point running quests on EE if not for XP? EE might not be needed. Ofc I may run VOn 3 ad nauseam 100 times to get enough XP to cap. Is this the supposed way to play the game? To XP farm grind just 3-5 quests? I still do not give up hope the whole game is supposed to be played, not 3-5 quests and the rest of the quests is just to look at or run once for favor.

Elite loot. The point is, even when a single loot piece just gives an insignificant + more than normal or hard loot, over 10 items (2 weapon slots, helmet, bracers, 2 rings, necklace, trinket, gloves, boots) this power adds up. Yellow instead of colorless slot? Seems inocculous, but is not. with yellow you get a whole lot more options what to slot than with colorless. Take green over yellow... Insignifficantly small, but adding up. After 10 small power-ups this is getting a huge advantage. That is pure powercreep.

Elite needs to be run. On heroics even more than on epics, but in truth both heroic and epic elite need to be run. Making EE hard for the top caped lv. 28 toons just widens the gap between those that already are farmed out and those that still have to go a long way.

By the way, making EE harder usually means making HE harder too (however these are interconnected) - at last this is how it worked out the last times something was tweaked on the elite difficulties. That means making the TR train more grind and more resource intensiv. Results in deterring even more players that are needed to form a sustaining player base. Bad idea.


So, Elite is useless at the moment (XP, Favor? useless to endgamers) so we need a new difficulty? Upping Elite difficulty, instead of making a new difficulty, would just widen gap? Color me impressed with this logic.

Make Hard the Elite we have now (maybe a slightly bit easier), make the killer DM the new Elite and done, still 3 difficulties, we will have the new Elite loot and people who want to run the old elite can run Hard.

See above. Making elite harder makes it harder for those still dependent to farm out the elite loot and the elite XP and the elite Favor. Not everybody already has the tripple heroic, iconic and epic completionist with all the items necessary to build top notch toons already farmed. Yes, making elite harder now just wides the gap between those that have already everything (and are strongly in favor of making Elite harder) and those that have not.



There are 4 different difficulties. Why oh why should the highest one be the default one? The things you named should have been the rewards not the matter of course. Unfortunately the ship has sailed already because they havent been able to synchronise the release of powercreep and difficulty scaling. I really really hope that the new content will be difficult from the start.

As long as the highest difficulty gives overproportionally more XP, favor and loot compared to the next lower difficulty the highest difficulty will be run, at least everybody will try to. Simple as that. Nobody said there should be an automatic entitlement. Better for the game if there is a cap on what you get from quests and the last difficulty is for the sake of accomplishement, not for the gain. But alas, the best the game has to offer is to be found on the highest difficulty at the moment. Change this and we may talk about whatever changes fit the desires of the "ddo is too easy" crowd.

[Samir_Bennal]

Meh I'm hearing the same thing from WoW players, too easy now dumbed down!

The producers don't care if the make things that work in PVE which completely break PVP for a game with such large focus on PVP that's lame.


I wouldn't know first had as I preordered WoW on initial release capped in 2 months & quit.

Didn't even make it till the end of my initial 30 days free with purchase back then. Haven't looked back either.

[kauetomaz]

Champions is more about replayability than difficulty, and honestly we are pretty happy with Champions. Our datamining is showing that people are engaging in the system.



Sev~

HA! you do realise there is a difference between "engaging in the system" coz you like it and coz if you dont kill them they will wipe the whole party real fast.
There is no way for you to determine whether the player base as a whole likes it or not without and on/off switch that the player themselves can choose when champions will be a thing or not, and trust me when i say that at least in my experience in orien within the people i normally talk to (all completionists with multiple epic lives and heroics, all the gear you can imagine and years of experience) champions are annoying and ive lost count of the amount of ppl that have taken a break when champs were first implemented.

[mikarddo]

Add a new difficulty, please. It does not have to be complicated to make either.

1. Add a lvl 35 version that scales the cr and stats of mobs automagically for every epic quest. Its doesnt have tø be perfectly aligned just hard as hell.
2. Make every single mob a champ including champ versions of the bosses. We are going for hard here.
3. Make the xp, favor and named loot the exact same as in the elite version.
4. Make the quests not scale down for number of players at all.
5. Add more cool mysterious remnant rewards. This may be the only hard part to this.

Higher level random loot, far more champ drops and the challenge should make it attractive for the players that find EE too easy. Similar xp, named loot and favor should make it non-mandatory.

[Nestroy]

HA! you do realise there is a difference between "engaging in the system" coz you like it and coz if you dont kill them they will wipe the whole party real fast.
There is no way for you to determine whether the player base as a whole likes it or not without and on/off switch that the player themselves can choose when champions will be a thing or not, and trust me when i say that at least in my experience in orien within the people i normally talk to (all completionists with multiple epic lives and heroics, all the gear you can imagine and years of experience) champions are annoying and ive lost count of the amount of ppl that have taken a break when champs were first implemented.

I love champs - and I love the quests where I have plenty of them red named with chests ^^. [sarcasm=off] Fun apart - they add randomness so many from the vocal "ddo is too easy" crowd here wanted. And well, we have random wipes because we meet 2-3 champs from hell at the same time. And I would guess, caused by the randomness sales for rez cakes and mana pots are up too. Win for Turbine.

[Severlin]

HA! you do realise there is a difference between "engaging in the system" coz you like it and coz if you dont kill them they will wipe the whole party real fast.
There is no way for you to determine whether the player base as a whole likes it or not without and on/off switch that the player themselves can choose when champions will be a thing or not, and trust me when i say that at least in my experience in orien within the people i normally talk to (all completionists with multiple epic lives and heroics, all the gear you can imagine and years of experience) champions are annoying and ive lost count of the amount of ppl that have taken a break when champs were first implemented.

When I talk about engagement, I am talking about players that are grinding out champions tokens when the new vendor items became available as well as players encountering champions in the normal flow of the game. As an aside, our player concurrency numbers didn't show any kind of dip. Player numbers have been fairly consistent and healthy throughout the champions introduction.

Sev~

[Nestroy]

Add a new difficulty, please. It does not have to be complicated to make either.

1. Add a lvl 35 version that scales the cr and stats of mobs automagically for every epic quest. Its doesnt have tø be perfectly aligned just hard as hell.
2. Make every single mob a champ including champ versions of the bosses. We are going for hard here.
3. Make the xp, favor and named loot the exact same as in the elite version.
4. Make the quests not scale down for number of players at all.
5. Add more cool mysterious remnant rewards. This may be the only hard part to this.

Higher level random loot, far more champ drops and the challenge should make it attractive for the players that find EE too easy. Similar xp, named loot and favor should make it non-mandatory.

/signed and amen to that!

[Wizza]

See above. Making elite harder makes it harder for those still dependent to farm out the elite loot and the elite XP and the elite Favor. Not everybody already has the tripple heroic, iconic and epic completionist with all the items necessary to build top notch toons already farmed. Yes, making elite harder now just wides the gap between those that have already everything (and are strongly in favor of making Elite harder) and those that have not.

You can complete Epic Elite with Epic Normal gear. Or even naked, if you are really patient and have some tactic. You don't NEED ELITE loot for anything in this game, not even raids.

[slarden]

As an aside, our player concurrency numbers didn't show any kind of dip. Player numbers have been fairly consistent and healthy throughout the champions introduction.

Sev~

That's great to hear. There are quite a few LFMs on Sarlona most of the time.

[Seikojin]

Some thoughts:

~ There are some things that are clear from our datamining in multiple games and here is one of them; if the game does not occasionally offer new challenges and new rewards then players leave. This isn't power creep, but rather a planned increase in power and challenge. We call it vertical progression; an update with vertical progression will offer greater loot and also offer up larger challenges. That doesn't mean there aren't lots of opportunities for horizontal progression as well for updates that are focused on that.

~ The harder the content, the more player organizers have to pay attention to the gearing of potential adventurers. Sometimes it is the elitism of an organizer that just feels like having an easy run with geared out companions, but as the challenge of content increases it can also become more and more an issue of just being practical. If we tune content to be really hard then there will be players who are excluded because of gear. I've been there and it sucks to be excluded because you aren't geared up enough; we are sensitive to this. On the other hand making all content easy enough where gearing doesn't matter creates a game that not only lacks challenge, but also lacks any practical motivation for gearing up.

These are the types of discussions and decisions we work on all the time. The hardest part is that there is no one "correct" answer since a change that is good for one type of player could be bad for another group.

~ We talked about having a "Killer DM" difficulty level above elite that removed group scaling entirely, had an additional level of champion effects, and nudged up the damage and damage mitigation of enemies by, say, 10%. This has some challenges.

("Killer DM" is not serious, it's our internal joke way of referring to a higher difficulty.)

1.) We would now be spreading players over an additional difficulty. In the best scenario players who feel like grouping flock to this difficulty because it doesn't scale down with group size. In a worse scenario we now have players looking for groups split between Elite and Killer DM mode and it becomes harder to find groups.

2.) How do we reward players willing to run on Killer DM difficulty? Revamping all the loot in the game for a new difficulty is not an option. More loot boosts will just make items you can't use yet. We don't want to drastically increase the amount of XP players are getting as we already have players who don't feel they have enough to do. We could create a series of achievements based on completing Killer DM dungeons but would that really motivate players to participate?

3.) Would the game even be improved by a feature like this?

As you can see, these discussions bring up a lot of difficult side questions and potential consequences.

Sev~

I completely agree that the more vertical content there is, the more outdated and 'useless' old content can become.

However expanding horizontally would offer new vertical branches to start. In the theme of questing, you have types of quests like hack and slash, puzzles, conversational, spellcasting kinds, ranged, thematic to monster types, thematic to lore, etc. Just add new vertical tiers on those branches instead of lumping the quest types into one bucket.

And in effect, they do this to a degree. The madness chain is a good example of some of everything.

The big hurdle is trying to make horizontal chains that contain something for everyone. Honestly, that should not be considered. This would free content up to be something you can pick and choose on your way to cap instead of having to run the puzzle quests in the madness chain just to complete the chain or get the decent exp or get a saga. This would also allow saga rewards for those categories as well. Further reducing quest repetition and burnout.

As far as bored because of over abundant content, that is misleading in the sense that there is not enough of every content type to satisfy a one and done for a 4th life player. You can, with pots, do a one and done if you have everything going for you (streak, bb, ship, item, vip, pot), but you have to run every quest.

If we expand vertically on horizontal quest types, it would drive up the once and done capability and also add to the play diversity. Puzzle players would be able to group and play a completely puzzle based ddo game. Etc.

[Zasral]

When I talk about engagement, I am talking about players that are grinding out champions tokens when the new vendor items became available as well as players encountering champions in the normal flow of the game. As an aside, our player concurrency numbers didn't show any kind of dip. Player numbers have been fairly consistent and healthy throughout the champions introduction.

Sev~

We don't have a choice but to deal with champs. If you want to know how everyone feels about them, not just the 2-3% of players that post on forums, add a survey at log in. Give 25 turbine points for filling out the survey so people will do it, and doing it at login will make it easy for you to make sure only one completion per account. I will bet you personally sev $100 the majority wants them gone. As far as grinding champ chunks who doesn't want a flask of FOM? In game personally I know 3 people that love the champs, another 6 that don't care either way, and around 20 that dislikes them. Those are just people I've grouped with, and either talked to about champs, or overheard talk about champs to others.

[Nestroy]

You can complete Epic Elite with Epic Normal gear. Or even naked, if you are really patient and have some tactic. You don't NEED ELITE loot for anything in this game, not even raids.

I can complete EE Phiarlan Carneval on al v. 28 toon with full ePLs and primary ED naked, true. But hello, this is lv. 23 (according to scoresheet), so this is supposed to be easier in comparrison than e.g. EE MOT or EE HH. Ever tried EE Small Problem with a lv. 22 toon in an off ED and with lv. 22 gear? Not impossible, but definitively more of a challenge. You may be surprised of how fast you may get a party wipe there. And yes, this includes you using tactics.

Regarding "needing" vs. "DDO is too easy": All the people I met so far that tell me that DDO is too easy are hardcore gamers that have their toons well geared, well groomed and most of them well into high ammounts of PLs. The rest plays exploiting fotm builds. Well, DDO gets easy with every slight power increase added. Compare a well geared pure build 1st lifer to a well groomed splash fotm 1st lifer or a well groomed multiple completionist build. Just compare the pure power level. It´s easy to see why the later builds find the game boring where the first either find it challenging or impossible at all.

[Seljuck]

HA! you do realise there is a difference between "engaging in the system" coz you like it and coz if you dont kill them they will wipe the whole party real fast.
There is no way for you to determine whether the player base as a whole likes it or not without and on/off switch that the player themselves can choose when champions will be a thing or not, and trust me when i say that at least in my experience in orien within the people i normally talk to (all completionists with multiple epic lives and heroics, all the gear you can imagine and years of experience) champions are annoying and ive lost count of the amount of ppl that have taken a break when champs were first implemented.

Annoying because they break Your xp/min run? Or because they force You to actually heal yourself ? Or maybe to slow down on your path to end of the quest? To be honest for me they do not change as much. Yes I have to be more careful, sometimes slow down a little bit, but in most cases STUN solves all my problems with champions. They at least do this one thing, force me to slow down sometimes, and this is good step to bringing back challenge.

I have to admit that I just 'love' people who say: 'hey, smt is annoying' without any evidences WHY actually is annoying??

[Wizza]

I can complete EE Phiarlan Carneval on al v. 28 toon with full ePLs and primary ED naked, true. But hello, this is lv. 23 (according to scoresheet), so this is supposed to be easier in comparrison than e.g. EE MOT or EE HH. Ever tried EE Small Problem with a lv. 22 toon in an off ED and with lv. 22 gear? Not impossible, but definitively more of a challenge. You may be surprised of how fast you may get a party wipe there. And yes, this includes you using tactics.

More of a challenge = not impossible, which is my point. If I can complete NAKED and OFF DESTINY What goes Up AND Terminal Delirium, which are the most hardest ones (and I actually DID), then you can definetely do it way easier with Epic Normal loot, which again is my point. You don't need epic elite loot for anything in this game.

[Seljuck]

I can complete EE Phiarlan Carneval on al v. 28 toon with full ePLs and primary ED naked, true. But hello, this is lv. 23 (according to scoresheet), so this is supposed to be easier in comparrison than e.g. EE MOT or EE HH. Ever tried EE Small Problem with a lv. 22 toon in an off ED and with lv. 22 gear? Not impossible, but definitively more of a challenge. You may be surprised of how fast you may get a party wipe there. And yes, this includes you using tactics.

Regarding "needing" vs. "DDO is too easy": All the people I met so far that tell me that DDO is too easy are hardcore gamers that have their toons well geared, well groomed and most of them well into high ammounts of PLs. The rest plays exploiting fotm builds. Well, DDO gets easy with every slight power increase added. Compare a well geared pure build 1st lifer to a well groomed splash fotm 1st lifer or a well groomed multiple completionist build. Just compare the pure power level. It´s easy to see why the later builds find the game boring where the first either find it challenging or impossible at all.

And THATS why I would love to see NEW Difficulty that WILL BE exclusive to ONLY lv. 30 characters.

Lv 1-19 -> Run Heroic (Diff doesn't matter here)
Lv. 20-29 -> Run EPIC (Who cares about diff here? And so everyone will run EN for fast xp/min)
Lv. 30 ONLY -> Run new shiny killer difficulty for challenge and a little bit of more power.

Talk about who should run elite and who should run normal are UNCONSTRUCTIVE. People will run what they want, no one and nothig will change that. The point is that even those hardcore players should have something to do, because right now They dont have.

[Oxarhamar]

Annoying because they break Your xp/min run? Or because they force You to actually heal yourself ? Or maybe to slow down on your path to end of the quest? To be honest for me they do not change as much. Yes I have to be more careful, sometimes slow down a little bit, but in most cases STUN solves all my problems with champions. They at least do this one thing, force me to slow down sometimes, and this is good step to bringing back challenge.

I have to admit that I just 'love' people who say: 'hey, smt is annoying' without any evidences WHY actually is annoying??

the ones I find annoying are the Wall of HP Champs.

I don't mind targeting champs first because, they might be a bit dangerous but, Champs that are no danger at all just more HP Bloat is boring and annoying.

[Seljuck]

the ones I find annoying are the Wall of HP Champs.

I don't mind targeting champs first because, they might be a bit dangerous but, Champs that are no danger at all just more HP Bloat is boring and annoying.

That's fair response and I agree with that. Referring to my original post, I pointed there same thing.

[Cathimon]

And THATS why I would love to see NEW Difficulty that WILL BE exclusive to ONLY lv. 30 characters.

Lv 1-19 -> Run Heroic (Diff doesn't matter here)
Lv. 20-29 -> Run EPIC (Who cares about diff here? And so everyone will run EN for fast xp/min)
Lv. 30 ONLY -> Run new shiny killer difficulty for challenge and a little bit of more power.

Talk about who should run elite and who should run normal are UNCONSTRUCTIVE. People will run what they want, no one and nothig will change that. The point is that even those hardcore players should have something to do, because right now They dont have.

I disagree, I'd like a new difficulty accross the board. From Korthos to Shavarath and Wheloon. Call it Mythic, Insane, Nightmare or Killer DM I don't really care. The thing I hated on other MMOs I played were my friends at cap telling me ''right now it's boring but once you get to cap, it's going to be fun''.

The TR scene on DDO is huge. The people who do TR, (everybody?) could benefit from some more challenging Shan-to-Kor and stuff. I don't care that much about the rewards, it's about the thrill, the challenge, the fun.

[PermaBanned]

Some thoughts:

~ There are some things that are clear from our datamining in multiple games and here is one of them; if the game does not occasionally offer new challenges and new rewards then players leave. This isn't power creep, but rather a planned increase in power and challenge. We call it vertical progression; an update with vertical progression will offer greater loot and also offer up larger challenges. That doesn't mean there aren't lots of opportunities for horizontal progression as well for updates that are focused on that.

~ The harder the content, the more player organizers have to pay attention to the gearing of potential adventurers. Sometimes it is the elitism of an organizer that just feels like having an easy run with geared out companions, but as the challenge of content increases it can also become more and more an issue of just being practical. If we tune content to be really hard then there will be players who are excluded because of gear. I've been there and it sucks to be excluded because you aren't geared up enough; we are sensitive to this. On the other hand making all content easy enough where gearing doesn't matter creates a game that not only lacks challenge, but also lacks any practical motivation for gearing up.

These are the types of discussions and decisions we work on all the time. The hardest part is that there is no one "correct" answer since a change that is good for one type of player could be bad for another group.

~ We talked about having a "Killer DM" difficulty level above elite that removed group scaling entirely, had an additional level of champion effects, and nudged up the damage and damage mitigation of enemies by, say, 10%. This has some challenges.


1.) We would now be spreading players over an additional difficulty. In the best scenario players who feel like grouping flock to this difficulty because it doesn't scale down with group size. In a worse scenario we now have players looking for groups split between Elite and Killer DM mode and it becomes harder to find groups.

2.) How do we reward players willing to run on Killer DM difficulty? Revamping all the loot in the game for a new difficulty is not an option. More loot boosts will just make items you can't use yet. We don't want to drastically increase the amount of XP players are getting as we already have players who don't feel they have enough to do. We could create a series of achievements based on completing Killer DM dungeons but would that really motivate players to participate?

3.) Would the game even be improved by a feature like this?

As you can see, these discussions bring up a lot of difficult side questions and potential consequences.

Sev~I love you. There, I've said it. Call it a bromance or a man crush I don't care. This level of frankness in discussion - and especially on the matter at hand - is awesome. Oh, and btw:


("Killer DM" is not serious, it's our internal joke way of referring to a higher difficulty.) If you were to implement this higher extreme difficulty, and don't name it "Killer DM" perhaps consider using the sentiment in the opening line of the Difficulty description on the quest entry panel? If something like "The DM is trying to kill you" were the first words you read when clicking the {harder than Elite} button, that would be nice and direct about what you're stepping into - and a bit humorous at the same time :D

[Gremmlynn]

The question really is how often is it used?No, even if it is never used, if it's not causing any problems how is it worth any effort at all to remove it?

That said, I'm about as far from being a neat freak as can be gotten. If it's not in the way, there could be (is) an empty beer can sitting on a shelf in my work shop for years, simply due to me finding no good reason for it not to be there.

[Gremmlynn]

when elite/hard players prefer it over elite/hard because its faster and more efficient, yes. that should throw some red flags up.It just tells me that they are max efficiency players, not elite/hard players.

[FestusHood]

Do we see a nerf coming in the future or is it just the new normal?

Frankly, I think the game was more broken when armor was worthless. We're not playing Stormtroopers.

I agree with you on this. I don't want to see armor go back to being useless.

My feeling is that the mistake was in both changing the formula and making the numbers higher at the same time. It was the double buff that created the problem. They probably should have just tried changing the formula first, but i can see how maybe they didn't want to undershoot and end up having to go back and fiddle with this more.

[Qhualor]

It just tells me that they are max efficiency players, not elite/hard players.

nice twist, but that's not what is happening in game. elite players are taking advantage of efficiency using the path of least resistance and gaining rewards faster and easier.

[FestusHood]

If you were to implement this higher extreme difficulty, and don't name it "Killer DM" perhaps consider using the sentiment in the opening line of the Difficulty description on the quest entry panel? If something like "The DM is trying to kill you" were the first words you read when clicking the {harder than Elite} button, that would be nice and direct about what you're stepping into - and a bit humorous at the same time :D

For the killer mode, when describing who is supposed to be able to handle this difficulty, it should just say 'nobody'.

[Connman]

For the killer mode, when describing who is supposed to be able to handle this difficulty, it should just say 'nobody'.

Yeah seriously I agree with your sentiment, it is kind of like the disclaimer at the beginning of south park.

[Qhualor]

No, even if it is never used, if it's not causing any problems how is it worth any effort at all to remove it?

That said, I'm about as far from being a neat freak as can be gotten. If it's not in the way, there could be (is) an empty beer can sitting on a shelf in my work shop for years, simply due to me finding no good reason for it not to be there.

if its not being used enough, why justify the time and resources to continue having that difficulty when it does need attention? it seems to me that its a forgotten difficulty setting that most don't use, if any.

personally, I don't care if casual is removed or not but the only time I see or hear anyone using it is for Von 3 pre-quest and testing the ballista damage in Storm the Beaches (except there are no ballistas on casual). I cant even think of a good reason to have that setting even if I put myself in the shoes of an extreme casual player.

[Gremmlynn]

currently, the only time I really see people being exclusive is for EE newer raids or because they have a static group already. the current state of the game overall isn't that difficult where you need to "link your green steel weapon". its more you on how you are able to deal with random people. if Sev were to make the game more challenging so it was "forced grouping" on elite, than those that have issues with random people would most likely go with static grouping instead of just throwing up an "IP" lfm and soloing or shortmanning like is commonly seen now.That really doesn't answer the question of what would make people want to pug over running with a guild/static group. As that was the premise I was questioning.

[MaeveTuohy]

if its not being used enough, why justify the time and resources to continue having that difficulty when it does need attention? it seems to me that its a forgotten difficulty setting that most don't use, if any.

personally, I don't care if casual is removed or not but the only time I see or hear anyone using it is for Von 3 pre-quest and testing the ballista damage in Storm the Beaches (except there are no ballistas on casual). I cant even think of a good reason to have that setting even if I put myself in the shoes of an extreme casual player.

Casual is mostly used for speed flagging and for multiple runs of Dreaming Dark to get the right Ioun stones.

It should go.

[Thar]

Champions is more about replayability than difficulty, and honestly we are pretty happy with Champions. Our datamining is showing that people are engaging in the system.

For armor and PRR/MRR, the base armor values were not changed to 10/20/30 for light/medium/heavy when the formula changed to be more effective, so heavy armor offers a bit too much PRR.

(Also, you don't need to use all caps.)



Part of the reality of vertical progression is that older content is no longer endgame and becomes part of the leveling and TR process. Sometimes it is hard because players become comfortable with that old content. You are correct, though, that the reality of new and exciting content - especially content with vertical progression - it that older content is less new and exciting.

Sev~

only problem is champion rewards don't work on epics if your over quest level.

[Andoris]

We don't want to go back to a place where armor is worthless. Part of the problem is that Evasion is just so good; but even with Evasion the overall mitigation of heavy armor is really strong.

My current plan is that this topic will be one of the first discussions with the new player's council.

Sev~

It was at one point but not anymore. I have recently converted two toons that have "no-fail" evasion over to Heavy Armor. The reasoning is that I gain far more surivability through Heavy Armor (PRR, MRR, and DR-60) than through evasion (and note that the no-fail evasion toons had upper 80s-90s PRR).

I agree that it is a really difficult balancing act between Dodge+Evasion and Heavy Armor; but at the moment at least.. the pendulum has swung too far in favor of Armor (at least at cap)

[Gremmlynn]

Add a new difficulty, please. It does not have to be complicated to make either.

1. Add a lvl 35 version that scales the cr and stats of mobs automagically for every epic quest. Its doesnt have tø be perfectly aligned just hard as hell.
2. Make every single mob a champ including champ versions of the bosses. We are going for hard here.
3. Make the xp, favor and named loot the exact same as in the elite version.
4. Make the quests not scale down for number of players at all.
5. Add more cool mysterious remnant rewards. This may be the only hard part to this.

Higher level random loot, far more champ drops and the challenge should make it attractive for the players that find EE too easy. Similar xp, named loot and favor should make it non-mandatory.This seems rather simple and obvious to me too.

[PermaBanned]

Casual is mostly used for speed flagging and for multiple runs of Dreaming Dark to get the right Ioun stones.

It should go.

I know they don't share this kind of info, but just once I'd really like to see their percentages on difficulty usage. Something like:

Heroic -
• Casual @ X%
• Normal @ X%
etc...

Epic-
same tables

Would be especially interesting to see the breakdowns for Pre/Post Armor up and Pre/Post Champs. /sigh A forumite can dream, right? Would finally offer a factual contrast for the all too often posted about assumptions, guesses & claims about "what {difficulty} most people play is..."

[redoubt]

It was at one point but not anymore. I have recently converted two toons that have "no-fail" evasion over to Heavy Armor. The reasoning is that I gain far more surivability through Heavy Armor (PRR, MRR, and DR-60) than through evasion (and note that the no-fail evasion toons had upper 80s-90s PRR).

I agree that it is a really difficult balancing act between Dodge+Evasion and Heavy Armor; but at the moment at least.. the pendulum has swung too far in favor of Armor (at least at cap)

Maybe increase the dodge cap for light armor and make it easier to get dodge?

I see the conflict being that with heavy armor your better PRR along with pseudo-evasion (MRR). The damage mitigation by the higher PRR is often more than the mitigation from dodge. This tips the scale in favor of PRR. If I have correctly stated it, then the options remaining are to nerf PRR or buff dodge.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Something to do with a capped character that still advances said character.




Ok.. that! Definition, I can agree with!

I say we take that definition and run with it.
Figure out how we do that exactly.

It could be some kind of gear, that can be crafted to a very high degree....
Green Steel on steroids... The devs have already mentioned plans for items that might fit the bill.

But this creates a power gap between new lvl 30s (newly capped) and those who have been grinding for awhile to "still advance) their character.

This gap isn't all that different from if we didn't have a cap to begin with.... and allowed lvl 60 characters for example.
A toon with a year of advancement at cap is significantly more powerful than a freshly capped one.


I'm not saying that I do not want this.... just saying that it is not as simple as it sounds, and creates more issues to be dealt with.



Is there even a way to advance a character without allowing too much of a power gap to develop?

Does the power gap matter?
Do we base quest level on something other than character level?

Are we evolving to "gear score?"
Do we want that?

I might be ok with it, if done right, but... not sure.....

[Qhualor]

That really doesn't answer the question of what would make people want to pug over running with a guild/static group. As that was the premise I was questioning.

if you already have a static group and play only when you play with them, than there wouldn't be any reason to pug. does there need to be a reason to pug with strangers rather than play with your set group?

[Thar]

Our datamining is showing that people are engaging in the system.


Sev~

What choice to we have if we want to do elite sagas or bravery bonus?

[Robai]

Some thoughts:

~ There are some things that are clear from our datamining in multiple games and here is one of them; if the game does not occasionally offer new challenges and new rewards then players leave. This isn't power creep, but rather a planned increase in power and challenge. We call it vertical progression; an update with vertical progression will offer greater loot and also offer up larger challenges. That doesn't mean there aren't lots of opportunities for horizontal progression as well for updates that are focused on that.

~ The harder the content, the more player organizers have to pay attention to the gearing of potential adventurers. Sometimes it is the elitism of an organizer that just feels like having an easy run with geared out companions, but as the challenge of content increases it can also become more and more an issue of just being practical. If we tune content to be really hard then there will be players who are excluded because of gear. I've been there and it sucks to be excluded because you aren't geared up enough; we are sensitive to this. On the other hand making all content easy enough where gearing doesn't matter creates a game that not only lacks challenge, but also lacks any practical motivation for gearing up.

These are the types of discussions and decisions we work on all the time. The hardest part is that there is no one "correct" answer since a change that is good for one type of player could be bad for another group.

~ We talked about having a "Killer DM" difficulty level above elite that removed group scaling entirely, had an additional level of champion effects, and nudged up the damage and damage mitigation of enemies by, say, 10%. This has some challenges.

("Killer DM" is not serious, it's our internal joke way of referring to a higher difficulty.)

1.) We would now be spreading players over an additional difficulty. In the best scenario players who feel like grouping flock to this difficulty because it doesn't scale down with group size. In a worse scenario we now have players looking for groups split between Elite and Killer DM mode and it becomes harder to find groups.

2.) How do we reward players willing to run on Killer DM difficulty? Revamping all the loot in the game for a new difficulty is not an option. More loot boosts will just make items you can't use yet. We don't want to drastically increase the amount of XP players are getting as we already have players who don't feel they have enough to do. We could create a series of achievements based on completing Killer DM dungeons but would that really motivate players to participate?

3.) Would the game even be improved by a feature like this?

As you can see, these discussions bring up a lot of difficult side questions and potential consequences.

Sev~

Thanks for your thoughts.
Yes, there are Elitist players, who might not accept other players, also there are some strange players, whom nobody wants to join (and knowing that many don't join them too since don't want to wait for ages until raid fills).
But when I farm something I ignore the not perfect social world and join them all, also accept them all by default (with some really very rare exceptions). I mean the problem is not there (not to me anyway).

The problem you're not noticing is BtC bank space (I doubt that any Dev have more than 3000 raid completions, which means Devs don't even notice this problem).
End game is impossible for this reason.
It's dead to me, it doesn't matter what new high lvl raids you create. I'll do it once just to see it and be done with it (= dead content since impossible to loot anything).

[Thar]

We don't want to go back to a place where armor is worthless. Part of the problem is that Evasion is just so good; but even with Evasion the overall mitigation of heavy armor is really strong.

My current plan is that this topic will be one of the first discussions with the new player's council.

Sev~

Evasion is good vs spells bad vs physical damage. Heavy armor is good vs all now. My pally takes less damage from spells with heavy armor than light armor with evasion. It's not even worth using evasion.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Alas, if only one guy. I can perfectly well remember shroud runs on elite (not the old end game by any means) where the main question was "show your primary weapon" and if this has not been silver of good or something similar you just got kicked. And I can perfectly well remember epic phiarlan carneval runs where members got kicked when not bringing whole sets of epic gear or at least high end devilforged greensteel items and the like... And this has been on several servers. When House Canith Questing was new, I remember comming with magewright spectacles and got issues with several epic groups why I cannot take the much better epic googles of timesensing or any other of the epic googles... I am still loling on that - a wiz can use them magewrights much better. But whatever, they had their fun to keep me out of the group and I had my fun switching servers a few days later and have run on Wayfinder ever since. Much less elitism,

Well, as long as endgame gear is not necessarly necessary to run the end game (because it is not better than near-to endgame gear at all) they may stuff endgame with whatever the devs can think off. But just no new power creep!!!


This is my major concern.

But... if the gear is not necessary, than the game becomes too easy for those who do have the gear.

So yeah... how do you have an end game.. how do you have character advancement....
without elitism...

that is fair to both the casuals and grinders....

[davmuzl]

Some thoughts:

~ There are some things that are clear from our datamining in multiple games and here is one of them; if the game does not occasionally offer new challenges and new rewards then players leave. This isn't power creep, but rather a planned increase in power and challenge. We call it vertical progression; an update with vertical progression will offer greater loot and also offer up larger challenges. That doesn't mean there aren't lots of opportunities for horizontal progression as well for updates that are focused on that.

~ The harder the content, the more player organizers have to pay attention to the gearing of potential adventurers. Sometimes it is the elitism of an organizer that just feels like having an easy run with geared out companions, but as the challenge of content increases it can also become more and more an issue of just being practical. If we tune content to be really hard then there will be players who are excluded because of gear. I've been there and it sucks to be excluded because you aren't geared up enough; we are sensitive to this. On the other hand making all content easy enough where gearing doesn't matter creates a game that not only lacks challenge, but also lacks any practical motivation for gearing up.

These are the types of discussions and decisions we work on all the time. The hardest part is that there is no one "correct" answer since a change that is good for one type of player could be bad for another group.

~ We talked about having a "Killer DM" difficulty level above elite that removed group scaling entirely, had an additional level of champion effects, and nudged up the damage and damage mitigation of enemies by, say, 10%. This has some challenges.

("Killer DM" is not serious, it's our internal joke way of referring to a higher difficulty.)

1.) We would now be spreading players over an additional difficulty. In the best scenario players who feel like grouping flock to this difficulty because it doesn't scale down with group size. In a worse scenario we now have players looking for groups split between Elite and Killer DM mode and it becomes harder to find groups.

2.) How do we reward players willing to run on Killer DM difficulty? Revamping all the loot in the game for a new difficulty is not an option. More loot boosts will just make items you can't use yet. We don't want to drastically increase the amount of XP players are getting as we already have players who don't feel they have enough to do. We could create a series of achievements based on completing Killer DM dungeons but would that really motivate players to participate?

3.) Would the game even be improved by a feature like this?

As you can see, these discussions bring up a lot of difficult side questions and potential consequences.

Sev~

About players being left out because they don't have enough gear... I feel like the answer to that lies in the quest/monster design. Higher difficulty doesn't always have to be higher numbers but could also mean that players have less time to react to whatever the NPCs are doing or add new mechanics. I still think that the LoB is the best raid in the game, because he forces players to react to whatever he does (and also gives them a chance). Now imagine bosses having additional spells/abilities like the whirlwind attack only on elite. Btw if you are a player and you don't get into endgame raids or quests in general, just play a healer. At least when I started that worked, now it might be different just because everybody is selfhealing anyway.

In general I would prefer if running elite wasn't so much about grinding, but I guess that's just part of MMOs. Still having an immediate reward for running ee would be great(thinking of something to upgrade an existing item like the seals from stormreaver and the heroic abbot raid).

[Talon_Moonshadow]

That is a player issue and not something Turbine can code to fix unfortunately. No matter how much people behave like this is a gear check or gear score game, its not. Soon enough those people who attempted to use gear as an absolute screening tool became the "urban legends" on their server. :p

I remember my first Elite Shroud.
I think I was third to join the LFM. For some reason, I did not get questioned...
But I watched the leader question everyone else who joined about their weapons.....

Then.....

I discovered "I" was the only person who could open elite...

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Back when Shroud was a big deal, nothing was wrong with checking if the warriors had their boss beater really. It's not elitism, it's screen for the d'bags. As a noob I remember being told to go to Jorasco get my reagent for holy sword. They allowed me in, just told me to go get the weapon.

How often have I asked people who joined my group if they had deathblock, and I got 'yes' for an answer and later found out they lied to me?

I think those are all legitimate questions and asking or demanding that your teamates bring adequate equipement for a perilous journey is more than necessary, it should be your role as party leader. It's not elitism. It's unprofessionalism and carelessness on the part of those who join. Any noob can ask questions and be prepared. I've never seen anybody refuse anybody because they did not have the best equipement, and I would be against that.


...and I've never understood why the "elite" think the game is so difficult to do without the best gear.....



(you need the gear, to run the quest, to get the gear....)

[Gremmlynn]

nice twist, but that's not what is happening in game. elite players are taking advantage of efficiency using the path of least resistance and gaining rewards faster and easier.That's what I said. They are making a choice based on their priorities. Though I don't understand why you characterize them as elite players.

I know players who make the exact opposite choice based on their own priorities, even if that means reentry penalties due to wipes.

Personally, I try to stick to whatever difficulty I think I have a reasonable chance of completing on whatever character I'm playing, that is my choice based on my priorities. That means I sometimes run with them and sometimes not, again that's due to my choice.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

nm

[Gremmlynn]

if its not being used enough, why justify the time and resources to continue having that difficulty when it does need attention? it seems to me that its a forgotten difficulty setting that most don't use, if any.

personally, I don't care if casual is removed or not but the only time I see or hear anyone using it is for Von 3 pre-quest and testing the ballista damage in Storm the Beaches (except there are no ballistas on casual). I cant even think of a good reason to have that setting even if I put myself in the shoes of an extreme casual player.Personally, when I saw the lengths they went to to make players not run it, I don't really know why it was added in the first place. Maybe as a "walk through" difficulty, but if that's the case it likely shouldn't have had any rewards, or flagging, etc, at all.

[Blackheartox]

Had this silly idea.
When cap is 30 turbine adds that killee fifficulty that you can enter only at 30.
You get killer shards from end chests with super low chance and upgrade all old epic items, every single one to new killer version.
So you need the epic item first and then you run new diff to up those to the new lv 30 version.
Pros: pack sales, reason to tr and etr and gather powers, longlivety and refreshing of content.
With epic vale and amarath and killer lob we would be back in best times of ddo.
Cons: none since players favor nor fun is affected by it and people have something to do for a long long time at cap.
Turbine could also earn hellalot money from this system and the variety of gear would make the game ultra fun.
Just like it was at 20

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Some thoughts:

~ There are some things that are clear from our datamining in multiple games and here is one of them; if the game does not occasionally offer new challenges and new rewards then players leave. This isn't power creep, but rather a planned increase in power and challenge. We call it vertical progression; an update with vertical progression will offer greater loot and also offer up larger challenges. That doesn't mean there aren't lots of opportunities for horizontal progression as well for updates that are focused on that.

~ The harder the content, the more player organizers have to pay attention to the gearing of potential adventurers. Sometimes it is the elitism of an organizer that just feels like having an easy run with geared out companions, but as the challenge of content increases it can also become more and more an issue of just being practical. If we tune content to be really hard then there will be players who are excluded because of gear. I've been there and it sucks to be excluded because you aren't geared up enough; we are sensitive to this. On the other hand making all content easy enough where gearing doesn't matter creates a game that not only lacks challenge, but also lacks any practical motivation for gearing up.

These are the types of discussions and decisions we work on all the time. The hardest part is that there is no one "correct" answer since a change that is good for one type of player could be bad for another group.

~ We talked about having a "Killer DM" difficulty level above elite that removed group scaling entirely, had an additional level of champion effects, and nudged up the damage and damage mitigation of enemies by, say, 10%. This has some challenges.

("Killer DM" is not serious, it's our internal joke way of referring to a higher difficulty.)

1.) We would now be spreading players over an additional difficulty. In the best scenario players who feel like grouping flock to this difficulty because it doesn't scale down with group size. In a worse scenario we now have players looking for groups split between Elite and Killer DM mode and it becomes harder to find groups.

2.) How do we reward players willing to run on Killer DM difficulty? Revamping all the loot in the game for a new difficulty is not an option. More loot boosts will just make items you can't use yet. We don't want to drastically increase the amount of XP players are getting as we already have players who don't feel they have enough to do. We could create a series of achievements based on completing Killer DM dungeons but would that really motivate players to participate?

3.) Would the game even be improved by a feature like this?

As you can see, these discussions bring up a lot of difficult side questions and potential consequences.

Sev~



Thank you.

And despite my strong anti-elitist stance, I know that some amount of gear is practical for difficult challenges.





But it was never, ever, needed back in the MYDDO days of the coming soon Shroud endgame.

Heavy Fort was way more important than the so-called required 400 HP min.
(and not really needed if you were not meleeing.)

Poison and disease immunity would have been a better screening tool than DR breakers IMO. The DR was not that bad.

How many bow using Rangers were excluded?
Then... those Rangers got together and did all-ranged Shrouds easier than any other group....


Elitism sucks. And it is not even correct.
Just correct for a certain type of player that solves quests with the Rocky endurance, hit em hard while you let them hit you method...

Quest knowledge means so much more than gear.

Yes, gear is important.
But I do not want other players deciding who isn't tall enough to ride the ride.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

If splitting players between difficulties is bad then why did you guys set up 4 difficulties to begin with? I am not sure this makes much sense. Unless you had for vision that every players end up on the same level, which is nonsensical. There will always be bad and good players...

But what are the players who have crushed the current content do exactly? I'm not concerned about those who feel left out as much as I am concerned about my own gaming experience and I know I could find players to accompany me on my journey to ''Killer DM'' difficulty. Right now, I'm really bored and I think you're spreading players by not giving them what they want.


Good and bad players does not equal Completionists with raid loot and casual....

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Emphatically, yes.

Once upon a time, there was a difficulty called "epic elite" that wiped all but the best parties at end game. It mattered for this difficulty that you had spent time collecting your past lives and gear, and you were motivated to get more because you could feel the difference that those boosts made.

Sometime in the past year, it stopped feeling like this stuff mattered when you walk into a quest on the hardest difficulty. We don't use the term "EE-capable" for good builds now, because everything is "EE-capable".


Give us a challenge to strive for and we have a reason to keep working to improve.


...and I remember one EE quest I was in, with my non-grinding first life toon, where we were told to perch somewhere and do a fight against a named caster..... and there I was .... standing with a full HP bar, raising five dead TRs from lvl 80-100 lvl guilds....
(guess they followed all that Str based DPS and HP is all that matters build advice...)

[Andoris]

Maybe increase the dodge cap for light armor and make it easier to get dodge?

I see the conflict being that with heavy armor your better PRR along with pseudo-evasion (MRR). The damage mitigation by the higher PRR is often more than the mitigation from dodge. This tips the scale in favor of PRR. If I have correctly stated it, then the options remaining are to nerf PRR or buff dodge.

A buff to Dodge would work.. but I know the devs are trying to get away from "All or Nothing" defenses as it makes balancing even more difficult.

Actually, the decline of Evasion has more to do with MRR than PRR. With no-fail evasion, against evadeable effects you take 0 damage which is nice.. but with decent MRR and a high reflex save you take ~25% damage (half from MRR half from making the save) against evadeable effects and ~50% magical damage against non-evadable effects. Add that to the already impressive benefits from Heavy Armor (PRR, the DR 60 from shadow guardian) and Heavy Armor is a no-brainer.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

I understand your thoughts here. But my opinion (and many others as I'm sure you've read on the forums) is DDO is clearly leaning too far in the direction of allowing too many people to complete epic elite. Not enough gearing is required. Much less gearing is required today than we had in the old epics when level 20 was cap.

We have a situation today where any player can easily acquire an almost complete set of best in slot endgame loot by running epic normal orchard. There's little reason to run the higher difficulties. The quality of those items is too low for the effort required to obtain it. There's very little motivation to gear right now and many players are bored, myself included, because there is not enough challenge. I mean heck, I am soloing non-scaling EE raids meant for 12 players right now on my battle cleric, not a top build by any means, just to get some challenge in DDO and the best weapon he has is tier 2 thunderforged.

When you threw the original champions in epic elite you were much closer to that sweet spot. Adding another difficulty even though it will exclude some players is necessary at this point. Game has gotten too easy for veteran players...and there's a lot of them.

And if you present the expectation for this difficulty as very tough initially, casual players will understand and won't get upset. Unlike when you introduced the original champions.

As for rewards on this "killer" difficulty, I'll go with the dev name for now, just give better gear with only a tiny increase in power. But you have to give some extra power or there's no reason to run the content. Lots of players don't care about anything else. Sort of like you're doing with Mythic items. That system is working well, keep it up. Make them exlusive drops to this killer difficulty in the future. But change the name from "mythic" items to something else so players don't get upset when they no longer drop in epic elite.

Make this "killer" version have an extra 8 spellpower over the regular version, or an extra 1d4 damage on a weapon. Nothing game changing that will require casual players to run those difficulties, but enough of a carrot to give vets a reason to go for them.

Also throw in other rewards such as cosmetics, creature companions, higher drop rates for stat and skill tomes. Maybe even astral shards and lesser hearts. That may be going too far though.

As for your last question, this would absolutely improve the game. Lack of difficulty is causing players to get bored and leave. It's not just a small portion of power gamers complaining about it, it's much more widespread now. A big chunk of players feel unchallenged. It needs to be addressed.




That guy didn't grind as long as I did, so he doesn't deserve to be able to complete EE.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

I see this brought up a lot and I disagree.

Favor: What favor is needed that you wouldn't be able to get running hard or a heroic version of Elite on an Epic character? I really can't think of a single one.

XP: A Fallacy. Chai recently demonstrated a once and done hard streak to cap a 3rd lifer. For Epics, lol? You could run EN Spies/Wiz King and Von3 to cap if you desired. EE XP is not needed to cap.

Elite loot: Again if it is scaled to be minor increases of power it is a non issue. My EE +11 stat item vs that casual players +9 stat item = 1 point of DC. If 1 point of DC makes or breaks any build, then that build was flawed to begin with. EE Loot should be a small bit better to provide another layer of incentive and occasional pride in a new shiny.


I've always though that was the way to go.
The best gear, needs to be just a little better than the average gear..... that way the grinding is still rewarded, but the power gap is kept small, so that no one needs be excluded from content.

[Qhualor]

That's what I said. They are making a choice based on their priorities. Though I don't understand why you characterize them as elite players.

I know players who make the exact opposite choice based on their own priorities, even if that means reentry penalties due to wipes.

Personally, I try to stick to whatever difficulty I think I have a reasonable chance of completing on whatever character I'm playing, that is my choice based on my priorities. That means I sometimes run with them and sometimes not, again that's due to my choice.

because they are players that can handle elite difficulty but you gain rewards faster and more efficiently by running lower difficulties. its not a question about how good of a player they are. its the rewards that are misplaced on the wrong difficulty for these types of players. sometimes its a time issue that its not worth it to take longer getting what they want (loot, xp) and its not worth the resources to spend when they can skip shrines and zerg past/round up mobs at key points and move on to the next quest.

are you trying to say you don't know any elite players that run quests on norm for faster xp and loot? you wont label them as elite players just because of that?

[icekinslayer]

Wow, thank you so much for showing me who you really are. What server are you on and what are your characters' names? I want to add them to my "special" list.


doing 5dmg per swing because of DR is just comical. DR breakers were sort of important at least for one melee per group, no?

[Talon_Moonshadow]

When the Star-Belly children went out to play ball,
Could a Plain Belly get in the game... ? Not at all.
You only could play if your bellies had stars.
And the Plain Belly children had none upon thars.

[Oliphant]

Awesome! I thought Haunted Halls was a great model in terms of loot and content. I look forward to the temple!

The model for ToEE sounds even better to me, a bigger randomized dungeon that requires (I hope) crawling through the whole dungeon to get the best loot. The only part about HH I don't like is all those cool encounters that no one ever plays like the kobold catapults, luring the zombies over the cliff, etc. I hope ToEE is built in a way that encourages players not to abandon certain parts and only run a certain circuit. I love HH though, let's just be clear on that!

[Cetus]

Some thoughts:

~ There are some things that are clear from our datamining in multiple games and here is one of them; if the game does not occasionally offer new challenges and new rewards then players leave. This isn't power creep, but rather a planned increase in power and challenge. We call it vertical progression; an update with vertical progression will offer greater loot and also offer up larger challenges. That doesn't mean there aren't lots of opportunities for horizontal progression as well for updates that are focused on that.

Agreed, I don't think the term "power creep" applies when character improvements are matched with sufficiently challenging content. In fact, I've communicated my gripe with the games best loot dropping on normal ad nauseum = if anything, THIS contributed more power creep than anything.


~ The harder the content, the more player organizers have to pay attention to the gearing of potential adventurers. Sometimes it is the elitism of an organizer that just feels like having an easy run with geared out companions, but as the challenge of content increases it can also become more and more an issue of just being practical. If we tune content to be really hard then there will be players who are excluded because of gear. I've been there and it sucks to be excluded because you aren't geared up enough; we are sensitive to this. On the other hand making all content easy enough where gearing doesn't matter creates a game that not only lacks challenge, but also lacks any practical motivation for gearing up.

Of course you'll have folks excluding players out of runs, and yea I agree it sucks. But, this is not a reason to avoid releasing challenging content for a multitude of reasons:

1. Without the existence of such content, the attrition rate is quite alarming (as evident in the current state of the game)
2. Players exclude people for a variety of different reasons. Many of these "elitist" folks you are referring to are usually in clicks or guilds anyway with static groups. Throughout the past 9 years playing, I've seen this happen from time to time and I never noticed drops in server population (nothing like we see today).
3. This is why there are alternate difficulty settings for players that are not quite ready to tackle this stuff. In some respect, why should they enter a quest they aren't ready for? Overcoming lesser obstacles first, before attempting the challenges is a healthy thing for an MMO.
4. It isn't just about gear. Player skill is a much more important factor, and many of the very same "elitists" will gladly accept a lesser geared, but highly skilled player into these runs, even if the so-called organizer doesn't know the applicant personally, but if someone vouches for them, sees a reputable guild tag, or just knows of them, that's usually enough.


These are the types of discussions and decisions we work on all the time. The hardest part is that there is no one "correct" answer since a change that is good for one type of player could be bad for another group.

Rarely is there ever a "correct" answer. But, the clearly *incorrect* answer is continuing the recent trend of easily surmountable content with silver-platter catered loot. What was also clear, from my perspective anyway, is that we have historical precedent for maintaining a healthy player population. And this was when we had a game where not only a challenging endgame existed, but the amount of time, effort, and skill it required to obtain the games most powerful loot accommodated the time frames during which new content was released. So, even the ultra-fast grinders didn't feel as bored as we all do today (I don't mean to speak for anyone else, this is just my observation).


~ We talked about having a "Killer DM" difficulty level above elite that removed group scaling entirely, had an additional level of champion effects, and nudged up the damage and damage mitigation of enemies by, say, 10%. This has some challenges.

("Killer DM" is not serious, it's our internal joke way of referring to a higher difficulty.)

1.) We would now be spreading players over an additional difficulty. In the best scenario players who feel like grouping flock to this difficulty because it doesn't scale down with group size. In a worse scenario we now have players looking for groups split between Elite and Killer DM mode and it becomes harder to find groups.

I'm not quite following this. I get the first part, and yes those of us who "like" to group would surely flock to this. This is a good thing, as you recognize.

I don't get this second part, this would in fact make grouping easier because players will always have the elite content to tackle, especially since it scales so people will gladly shortman it. But now, we also have this additional option to broaden ones horizons - and includes the entire endgame crowd that has become bored with elite.



2.) How do we reward players willing to run on Killer DM difficulty? Revamping all the loot in the game for a new difficulty is not an option. More loot boosts will just make items you can't use yet. We don't want to drastically increase the amount of XP players are getting as we already have players who don't feel they have enough to do. We could create a series of achievements based on completing Killer DM dungeons but would that really motivate players to participate?

3.) Would the game even be improved by a feature like this?

As you can see, these discussions bring up a lot of difficult side questions and potential consequences.

Sev~

Revamp all the loot? Hell no.

Just give us a mini crafting system or a subset of rare killer-DM-difficulty-only items with really rare drop rates in each killer-DM quest.

Why can't we use them? Just make them ML 28 and just slightly more powerful/versatile items than we have today. Then when level cap rolls around, make all subsequent killer-dm items ML 30.

[HAL]

Good and bad players does not equal Completionists with raid loot and casual....

It is unfortunate that some people seem to just prefer to use insulting terms even when they aren't correct. And will call players "good" just because they have gear or lives but may not actually be good players.

But in response to you, "casual" isn't the opposite of geared Completionists either. I do not have a geared completionist character, but I do not believe I should be called a "casual" player either.

[HAL]

doing 5dmg per swing because of DR is just comical. DR breakers were sort of important at least for one melee per group, no?

Asking players to have what is necessary (not some arbitrary opinion but what is actually needed) to do a quest is not the same as Elitism.

[Connman]

...

2.) How do we reward players willing to run on Killer DM difficulty? Revamping all the loot in the game for a new difficulty is not an option. More loot boosts will just make items you can't use yet. We don't want to drastically increase the amount of XP players are getting as we already have players who don't feel they have enough to do. We could create a series of achievements based on completing Killer DM dungeons but would that really motivate players to participate?

I really think that the answer to this is cosmetics. The people that like cosmetics, as well as the people that dislike cosmetics are truly spread out amongst the entire player base. You have some players that like them, and some players that could care less. These players are members of all groups, casuals, elitists, flower sniffers, zergers or whatever you want to call yourself, I just stick to human with a tendency to zerg myself. Players that are not necessarily up to the challenge may just in fact be motivated to develop their characters, skills, or heck just friends lists of players pike off of to get these rewards.


...

3.) Would the game even be improved by a feature like this?

As you can see, these discussions bring up a lot of difficult side questions and potential consequences.

Sev~

My vote is yes, for what it is worth, at least to me it would be. But you folks at Turbine will really need to advertise that you have made a change, actually budget in some money to tell the MMO community what you have done. Paying people to do hundreds of hours of work, without spending money to tell people about the work that was done; is going to boil down to a waste of resources with a low ROI.

[Angelic-council]

Sev, I know you are a good producer. At the end of the day, it's you and your team's decition and I hope you guys make it right.

We all love DDO, and we can all see that this game could be improved dramatically. Right now, we have this never ending disccution about "power creeps" and the harder difficulty beyond EE. But let's think about it for a moment. We have those 4 difficulties: casual, normal, hard and elite. This was specifically designed so that people can freely choose the right difficulty which suits them. But, elite and epic elite was always for veteran challengers, thus, it should provide them with the best reward possible. So why do we even need something beyond elite and epic elite. The real problem here is not only about monsters, and how to buff them (it's also important as level gets higher). But how they placed and how people approach them. It's very easy in DDO to just rush forward and rely on whatever the spells or clickies are on your skill bar. And I can garanteed you this, even if killer DM goes live, this will never change. It's either too hard or people don't run it.

If we all look at the current DDO, like someone already pointed this out, this game rewards even casual players: Mark of Death for example. People had to run EE in order to aquire + 11 INT, WIS or STR equipments. But this one update ruined all those tears. As you can get the best gear even on casual difficulty. This has to be changed somehow.

Lastly, but... elite difficulty is not always about prepair your gear and kill them all. I think DDO.. D&D was a game where people beat it using not only burst power, but also intelligence. That's the beauty of D&D. Like, ok, there is a trap, but it can't be disable. What should I do? there are strong monsters ahead, maybe we somehow lore them here? but if we do that, we get red alert etc. Something interesting that people has to react depends on the situation, and don't just zerg straight ahead. Adding me mechasim is also an option. Keep up the good work, wish you the best of good luck!

[Oxarhamar]

I really think that the answer to this is cosmetics. The people that like cosmetics, as well as the people that dislike cosmetics are truly spread out amongst the entire player base. You have some players that like them, and some players that could care less. These players are members of all groups, casuals, elitists, flower sniffers, zergers or whatever you want to call yourself, I just stick to human with a tendency to zerg myself. Players that are not necessarily up to the challenge may just in fact be motivated to develop their characters, skills, or heck just friends lists of players pike off of to get these rewards.



My vote is yes, for what it is worth, at least to me it would be. But you folks at Turbine will really need to advertise that you have made a change, actually budget in some money to tell the MMO community what you have done. Paying people to do hundreds of hours of work, without spending money to tell people about the work that was done; is going to boil down to a waste of resources with a low ROI.

Agreed DDO needs some adverts

[Tesrali]

Some thoughts:

~ There are some things that are clear from our datamining in multiple games and here is one of them; if the game does not occasionally offer new challenges and new rewards then players leave. This isn't power creep, but rather a planned increase in power and challenge. We call it vertical progression; an update with vertical progression will offer greater loot and also offer up larger challenges. That doesn't mean there aren't lots of opportunities for horizontal progression as well for updates that are focused on that.

1.) We would now be spreading players over an additional difficulty. In the best scenario players who feel like grouping flock to this difficulty because it doesn't scale down with group size. In a worse scenario we now have players looking for groups split between Elite and Killer DM mode and it becomes harder to find groups.

2.) We could create a series of achievements based on completing Killer DM dungeons but would that really motivate players to participate?

3.) Would the game even be improved by a feature like this?


I run EE raids at cap even though I have all of the gear. Why?
It's a social activity with a good challenge!
There are a lack of good challenges in the game.
You ARE losing players who would play on a new difficulty ONLY FOR THE SAKE OF IT BEING DIFFICULT. Intangible achievements are better than losing players. We can always come up with balanced rewards for the content later.

[slarden]

Some thoughts:

~ There are some things that are clear from our datamining in multiple games and here is one of them; if the game does not occasionally offer new challenges and new rewards then players leave. This isn't power creep, but rather a planned increase in power and challenge. We call it vertical progression; an update with vertical progression will offer greater loot and also offer up larger challenges. That doesn't mean there aren't lots of opportunities for horizontal progression as well for updates that are focused on that.

~ The harder the content, the more player organizers have to pay attention to the gearing of potential adventurers. Sometimes it is the elitism of an organizer that just feels like having an easy run with geared out companions, but as the challenge of content increases it can also become more and more an issue of just being practical. If we tune content to be really hard then there will be players who are excluded because of gear. I've been there and it sucks to be excluded because you aren't geared up enough; we are sensitive to this. On the other hand making all content easy enough where gearing doesn't matter creates a game that not only lacks challenge, but also lacks any practical motivation for gearing up.

These are the types of discussions and decisions we work on all the time. The hardest part is that there is no one "correct" answer since a change that is good for one type of player could be bad for another group.

~ We talked about having a "Killer DM" difficulty level above elite that removed group scaling entirely, had an additional level of champion effects, and nudged up the damage and damage mitigation of enemies by, say, 10%. This has some challenges.

("Killer DM" is not serious, it's our internal joke way of referring to a higher difficulty.)

1.) We would now be spreading players over an additional difficulty. In the best scenario players who feel like grouping flock to this difficulty because it doesn't scale down with group size. In a worse scenario we now have players looking for groups split between Elite and Killer DM mode and it becomes harder to find groups.

2.) How do we reward players willing to run on Killer DM difficulty? Revamping all the loot in the game for a new difficulty is not an option. More loot boosts will just make items you can't use yet. We don't want to drastically increase the amount of XP players are getting as we already have players who don't feel they have enough to do. We could create a series of achievements based on completing Killer DM dungeons but would that really motivate players to participate?

3.) Would the game even be improved by a feature like this?

As you can see, these discussions bring up a lot of difficult side questions and potential consequences.

Sev~

You seem to have a good grasp on the different type of players and different type of motivations. As long as you are factoring all the different players into your design it will work out fine.

Right now you have a challenge system that goes up to level 30. I would like to see you add some new challenges with levels up to 100. You can even keep leader boards on the highest levels achieved by server and possibly provide some unique cosmetic rewards for crossing various levels for the first time: 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100. I am sure the higher levels would be unbeatable, but there is nothing wrong with that as an extreme challenge. Make challenges your extreme challenge vehicle since you already have a "choose your own difficulty" mechanism with the level selector.

[Nestroy]

Sev, I know you are a good producer. At the end of the day, it's you and your team's decition and I hope you guys make it right.

We all love DDO, and we can all see that this game could be improved dramatically. Right now, we have this never ending disccution about "power creeps" and the harder difficulty beyond EE. But let's think about it for a moment. We have those 4 difficulties: casual, normal, hard and elite. This was specifically designed so that people can freely choose the right difficulty which suits them. But, elite and epic elite was always for veteran challengers, thus, it should provide them with the best reward possible. So why do we even need something beyond elite and epic elite. The real problem here is not only about monsters, and how to buff them (it's also important as level gets higher). But how they placed and how people approach them. It's very easy in DDO to just rush forward and rely on whatever the spells or clickies are on your skill bar. And I can garanteed you this, even if killer DM goes live, this will never change. It's either too hard or people don't run it.

If we all look at the current DDO, like someone already pointed this out, this game rewards even casual players: Mark of Death for example. People had to run EE in order to aquire + 11 INT, WIS or STR equipments. But this one update ruined all those tears. As you can get the best gear even on casual difficulty. This has to be changed somehow.

Lastly, but... elite difficulty is not always about prepair your gear and kill them all. I think DDO.. D&D was a game where people beat it using not only burst power, but also intelligence. That's the beauty of D&D. Like, ok, there is a trap, but it can't be disable. What should I do? there are strong monsters ahead, maybe we somehow lore them here? but if we do that, we get red alert etc. Something interesting that people has to react depends on the situation, and don't just zerg straight ahead. Adding me mechasim is also an option. Keep up the good work, wish you the best of good luck!

You may be right for the base concepts of the difficulty system but with the introduction of favor and especially with the introduction of bravery streaks this argument became moot. Elite became a necesety with that. first do away with that necessety before anything is changed with elite. Or introduce a different difficulty (not necessarly endgame only, I would be vocal for a general 5th difficulty) that does not give other bravery bonus than elite, not more favor than elite, but maybe better loot chances than elite. And that is really killing the players. But as long as Elite is needed to be run by as many players as they can run it, do not touch itto make it a supposed endgame for the best few players!!!

Elite is not endgame any more, please get over that. Go for a true endgame, name it killer DM or Myth or whatever. And leave Elite to the (better) masses - elite for a whole lot of players is still a challenge. If not for you.

Endgame and elite game should be clearly 2 different kind of games.

[Braegan]

What you say might hold true for EE on a lv. 28 caped toon. Otherwise it is just plain wrong.

Favor - heroic elite is supposed to be played on level, meaning toons w/o EDs. What is the point being coerced to run lv. 17 heroic quests (lv. 19 on elite) on a lv. 20 toon with full EDs just to be barely able to make the quest (e.g. Terminal Delirium)? This is pointless. Then there are quite a fw quests meanwhile where there is no heroic quest, only elite. You do not get much PDK and Harper favor by running heroics alone, you know?

XP - what is the point of EE giving any Xp at all when EE is supposed to be run with lv. 28 capped toons? What is EE from a lv. 21 quest? On paper it is lv. 23. What is the point running quests on EE if not for XP? EE might not be needed. Ofc I may run VOn 3 ad nauseam 100 times to get enough XP to cap. Is this the supposed way to play the game? To XP farm grind just 3-5 quests? I still do not give up hope the whole game is supposed to be played, not 3-5 quests and the rest of the quests is just to look at or run once for favor.

Elite loot. The point is, even when a single loot piece just gives an insignificant + more than normal or hard loot, over 10 items (2 weapon slots, helmet, bracers, 2 rings, necklace, trinket, gloves, boots) this power adds up. Yellow instead of colorless slot? Seems inocculous, but is not. with yellow you get a whole lot more options what to slot than with colorless. Take green over yellow... Insignifficantly small, but adding up. After 10 small power-ups this is getting a huge advantage. That is pure powercreep.

Elite needs to be run. On heroics even more than on epics, but in truth both heroic and epic elite need to be run. Making EE hard for the top caped lv. 28 toons just widens the gap between those that already are farmed out and those that still have to go a long way.

By the way, making EE harder usually means making HE harder too (however these are interconnected) - at last this is how it worked out the last times something was tweaked on the elite difficulties. That means making the TR train more grind and more resource intensiv. Results in deterring even more players that are needed to form a sustaining player base. Bad idea.





Again I disagree with you completely.

Favor: Not only is most of it largely not needed, nearly all of it is attainable without all EE completions. If it is something you are striving for some max favor for a free +5 tome or whatever than that should be a in game goal that you should be proud of, not something you sleep walk through. There are also some quests that are only heroic (some PDK favor giving) which have no epic version. And to call out you example of PDK and Harper favor. Harper Favor has all but one quest (HH) that has heroic versions. PDK is easier than ever to get now. When Motu launched yes you needed to run EE nearly everything and some of the Estar challenges. Now with Wheloon (which has heroic version), 5 heroic quests, and those challenges, you could prolly get your 375 favor by running just Ehard. Even if you needed to run EE, some of the PDK quests are the easiest epics in game. So no. You do not *need* EE Favor.

XP: I run EE at level with bravery bonus while leveling up. It is an option. I did a much faster cap to 28 running nearly everything on EH (when I made that post about CoV vs XP gained running EH as an experiment). Yes EE XP is nice, but it is most certainly not needed to cap in any way, shape, or form. You don't even need to repeat a few select quests over and over again. You can run all the quests on EH and still cap. Plus since the time I did that test, E3BC and ENecro was released so there is more than enough xp. So no. You do not *need* EE XP.

Loot: Loot is a large incentive for why players run things. Back when a Globe of True Blood was extremely rare I ran EE Tor until I looted one. At the time I was largely not an EE player, but that shiny loot motivated me to want to get it. That is good for the game and the community. As I pugged it quite frequently and others got some shiny loot as well. There is going to be some power creep, but keeping it at a manageable level while rewarding players who play on a higher difficulty is a benefit to everyone. This is not even a topic of discussion. Higher level loot comes from higher level chests/quests. That has always been the way, because it works. But again, no. You do not *need* EE Loot. For the longest time all my characters sported EH gear and I did fine.

Elite does not need to be run. Nor is anyone entitled to be able to pwn Elite. Elite needs to be run less in heroics than in epics, contrary to your statement, in regards to Favor (there is an abundance of quests for which to attain needed rewards), XP (as been proven you can cap running Hard), Loot (is there much heroic loot that is tiered for elite...maybe GH, anything else? Surely I wouldn't call that needed).

Another point I disagree on. Making EE hard for the already ground out 28 will actually make it easier for those that haven't yet ground stuff out. Why? Because at that point when ubers are challenged and group more than just solo then...those that haven't already ground out things can 1) Get Favor they weren't able to before. 2) Get fatter XP. 3) More likely to get EE loot as those ubers will most likely have no need for it as they have multiples in the bank already and would just pass some loot along. When I started running Epics (cap 20) after doing some TRs this was most certainly the case, I got passed seals and shards a good deal from folks who already ground them out, now when I run those old epics I do the same and freely pass seals, shards, scrolls, EE loot - because I have no need for it as I have already ground it out. Again point proven false, again more players and the community as a whole benefits.

Making EE harder affecting HE is not an issue at all, save a few unique quests. HE is a snooze fest and has only gotten easier over the years. XP recurve, XP tomes, XP bonuses for VIP, XP bonuses on Daily Dice, XP bonuses for Daily Run though, Bravery Bonus etc, etc. Sorry I am not sympathetic to the plight of a newer player to the TR cycle as it is a million times easier now. Even if it got kicked up a bit, it remains light years ahead of what it used to be.

Also, to mention yet again. You do not need to run HE to cap. You do not need to run EE to cap. You do not need HE or EE to attain all the good favor rewards. You do not need to run HE or EE for viable loot (lol just look at Enecro - run EN and snag the goods off the chain rewards).

All of your points are incorrect.

[Seljuck]

Had this silly idea.
When cap is 30 turbine adds that killee fifficulty that you can enter only at 30.
You get killer shards from end chests with super low chance and upgrade all old epic items, every single one to new killer version.
So you need the epic item first and then you run new diff to up those to the new lv 30 version.
Pros: pack sales, reason to tr and etr and gather powers, longlivety and refreshing of content.
With epic vale and amarath and killer lob we would be back in best times of ddo.
Cons: none since players favor nor fun is affected by it and people have something to do for a long long time at cap.
Turbine could also earn hellalot money from this system and the variety of gear would make the game ultra fun.
Just like it was at 20

Looks like someone don't read my initial post :) I pointed there exactly same suggestion :)

[Azarddoze]

Thank you.

And despite my strong anti-elitist stance, I know that some amount of gear is practical for difficult challenges.





But it was never, ever, needed back in the MYDDO days of the coming soon Shroud endgame.

Heavy Fort was way more important than the so-called required 400 HP min.
(and not really needed if you were not meleeing.)

Poison and disease immunity would have been a better screening tool than DR breakers IMO. The DR was not that bad.

How many bow using Rangers were excluded?
Then... those Rangers got together and did all-ranged Shrouds easier than any other group....


Elitism sucks. And it is not even correct.
Just correct for a certain type of player that solves quests with the Rocky endurance, hit em hard while you let them hit you method...

Quest knowledge means so much more than gear.

Yes, gear is important.
But I do not want other players deciding who isn't tall enough to ride the ride.

Since DDO is an action RPG (added to its current buffed up state), gear will never be as important as a perfect vs worse gameplay anyways. So just that in itself kinds of block the need for a precise stats to be high enought. Though players leading groups are in charge and it's their right to set the rules they wish to set (can't avoid that)... even when we don't agree or think they're being "not so much elite" but wusses.

Most players drop the "you need x gear" barrier once they are confident about success themselves. They might not wanna fail, they might be leading and don't want to push a fail on others or they might just not be looking for a challenge at that moment. It's crazy how players are affraid of a simple quest failure in DDO, most follow that trend.

Gear is more important as an incentive and as an element that increases the longetivity of the game through let say, grinding. So, whatever the % of an upgrade it is over the next tier, there still has to be something.

[Blackheartox]

Looks like someone don't read my initial post :) I pointed there exactly same suggestion :)

Great minds think the same heh

[Qhualor]

You may be right for the base concepts of the difficulty system but with the introduction of favor and especially with the introduction of bravery streaks this argument became moot. Elite became a necesety with that. first do away with that necessety before anything is changed with elite. Or introduce a different difficulty (not necessarly endgame only, I would be vocal for a general 5th difficulty) that does not give other bravery bonus than elite, not more favor than elite, but maybe better loot chances than elite. And that is really killing the players. But as long as Elite is needed to be run by as many players as they can run it, do not touch itto make it a supposed endgame for the best few players!!!

Elite is not endgame any more, please get over that. Go for a true endgame, name it killer DM or Myth or whatever. And leave Elite to the (better) masses - elite for a whole lot of players is still a challenge. If not for you.

Endgame and elite game should be clearly 2 different kind of games.

running elite is mostly psychological. there is no real necessity to run elite. you don't need elite BB to level and you can always go back to get your elite favor if you want it bad enough. in my experience since ive been pugging most of the time since 2009, the past few years the masses have had the pleasure of almost no fail elite and running them fast paced. its a silly argument to use favor and affecting your leveling progression when there are multiple difficulty options available why elite cant be increased in challenge. back before MOTU, people were content with running quests on hard/norm and going back as a higher level for favor. it wasn't until there were better incentives for elite that people started asking to nerf the challenge so they could get the rewards easy enough.

[Rys]

You may be right for the base concepts of the difficulty system but with the introduction of favor and especially with the introduction of bravery streaks this argument became moot. Elite became a necesety with that.
Will the world end if you break your elite streak or something? I did multiple lives on hard streak and almost everytime I drop to hard in epics. And still here, doing well. But I can see how making the highest difficulty actually difficult would hurt many egos here.

[bartharok]

¨The only thing that "forces" me to play elite are sagas. Although i play them on elite only when i actually need whatever rewards true elite gives me.

[Azarddoze]

¨The only thing that "forces" me to play elite are sagas. Although i play them on elite only when i actually need whatever rewards true elite gives me.

If only that "need" was a "want"... the game could improve overall (for more players) with less complaints. Nothing that comes from favor or sagas is needed IMO. Until too many people believe so and we can't revert back... yet it still is not needed.

Perception will prevail but that's what has to change in the first place in order to leave more room for solutions.

Edit: Players should be entitled to having fun and freedom with the gameplay and their characters customisation. Entitled to be delivered quality content that is fun to play, bug fixes, enought update to promote longetivity, etc. While rewards are to be worked for and earned. Like a RPG maybe...

[Seljuck]

Ok so streak in current form is bad. People feel that that are forced to run elite only.

My solution:

Remove bravery streak from game and introduce single quest difficulty completions streak.
It should work as follow :
Player should complete quest on all difficulties to earn additional XP bonuses.
Completing quest on normal gives +20%Xp on next hard run, completing hard gives +40% xp on next elite run. Elite run reset bonuses. Each quest will have their own streak. Streak can't be shared among quests.

[EllisDee37]

Ok so streak in current form is bad. People feel that that are forced to run elite only.I disagree. I think the bravery streak mechanic is good, though I'd tweak it to cap your streak at 5 and switch it so that "breaking" a streak only decrements it instead of resetting it.


My solution:

Remove bravery streak from game and introduce single quest difficulty completions streak.
It should work as follow :
Player should complete quest on all difficulties to earn additional XP bonuses.
Completing quest on normal gives +20%Xp on next hard run, completing hard gives +40% xp on next elite run. Elite run reset bonuses. Each quest will have their own streak. Streak can't be shared among quests.For me, this solution would be horrible.

Bravery lets me not repeat quests; I run everything once per life. Your idea would result in me repeating quests, which would significantly reduce my overall fun.

[Seljuck]

I disagree. I think the bravery streak mechanic is good, though I'd tweak it to cap your streak at 5 and switch it so that "breaking" a streak only decrements it instead of resetting it.

For me, this solution would be horrible.

Bravery lets me not repeat quests; I run everything once per life. Your idea would result in me repeating quests, which would significantly reduce my overall fun.

You still could do only elite 1per quest.. but w/o bonuses. People already noticed that streak is not needed to get cap fast.
Xp curve was adjusted, there is no need to farm xp like it was before motu, even w/o streak.

Tell me, how you play before MotU? When there was no streak?

[Talon_Moonshadow]

The more I think about this, the best answer is to simply make the best gear, only a little better than the average gear.

That way the power gap is kept small.


...although right now the gap really isn't that small... it used to be; but it got a whole lot bigger in recent years.
On the other side though, there is a lot of nice gear available from non-raids right now, and it drops frequently.... a good thing IMO.

Right now people can actually get some real darn good stuff simply by doing a lot of quests, and not trying to grind. It still takes time, but all the casual player really needs to get some decent equipment is time doing a variety of quests, rather than grinding raids.

But despite that, there is a pretty big power gap right now.
I wish it were smaller...

[HAL]

Again I disagree with you completely.

Favor: Not only is most of it largely not needed, nearly all of it is attainable without all EE completions. If it is something you are striving for some max favor for a free +5 tome or whatever than that should be a in game goal that you should be proud of, not something you sleep walk through.

Players who are not playing completionist and/or raid geared characters are not "sleepwalking" through Elite. In general (as has been said MANY times), these players still find EE challenging. That is why many of those players (including myself) don't want Elite to be made more difficult. We want to still be able to get our Favor and BB.

And I'm not sure why we are suddenly talking about EE. In your previous post you said:


Favor: What favor is needed that you wouldn't be able to get running hard or a heroic version of Elite on an Epic character? I really can't think of a single one.

I play quests once and done at level. Sounds like you are suggesting playing on Hard to get to Epics and then going back with your Epic character and do quests over in order to get the Elite Favor.


Elite does not need to be run. Nor is anyone entitled to be able to pwn Elite. Elite needs to be run less in heroics than in epics, contrary to your statement, in regards to Favor (there is an abundance of quests for which to attain needed rewards), XP (as been proven you can cap running Hard), Loot (is there much heroic loot that is tiered for elite...maybe GH, anything else? Surely I wouldn't call that needed).

Nothing is "needed", this is a game. However the game is designed to encourage running Elite. That is just a fact.

[HAL]

Ok so streak in current form is bad. People feel that that are forced to run elite only.

My solution:

Remove bravery streak from game and introduce single quest difficulty completions streak.
It should work as follow :
Player should complete quest on all difficulties to earn additional XP bonuses.
Completing quest on normal gives +20%Xp on next hard run, completing hard gives +40% xp on next elite run. Elite run reset bonuses. Each quest will have their own streak. Streak can't be shared among quests.

One of the main reasons why people run Elite only is because they want to do a quest one time and be done. This proposal would only be for people who like to repeat a quest. It would not be a solution for many I know including my 2 static groups.

[Qhualor]

Players who are not playing completionist and/or raid geared characters are not "sleepwalking" through Elite. In general (as has been said MANY times), these players still find EE challenging. That is why many of those players (including myself) don't want Elite to be made more difficult. We want to still be able to get our Favor and BB.

you should pug more often and see how easy/ish groups are completing EEs.

keeping the highest difficulty easy enough for almost no fail is not a good reason why players should be entitled to max favor and BB.

[Blackheartox]

Players who are not playing completionist and/or raid geared characters are not "sleepwalking" through Elite. In general (as has been said MANY times), these players still find EE challenging. That is why many of those players (including myself) don't want Elite to be made more difficult. We want to still be able to get our Favor and BB.

And I'm not sure why we are suddenly talking about EE. In your previous post you said:



I play quests once and done at level. Sounds like you are suggesting playing on Hard to get to Epics and then going back with your Epic character and do quests over in order to get the Elite Favor.



Nothing is "needed", this is a game. However the game is designed to encourage running Elite. That is just a fact.
Any player capable of putting harmor and rolling a barb palie or bard nowadays or any other build with recent buffs is able and capable to complete ee content.
First or mega lifers it does not matter.
The prr and recent buffs allow that to any player who is capable to press 4 5 buttons.
I personally dont think this should be possible.
And if people like you say still exist then i dont want honestly , fron bottom of my heart i dont want ddo downgraded even more so that those unable of putting harmor and pressing 4 5 buttons can complete elite content.
Player like that destriy the fun for everyone who has the capability to learn, adapt, inprove and evolve.

Written on phone so lotsa typos

[Seljuck]

One of the main reasons why people run Elite only is because they want to do a quest one time and be done. This proposal would only be for people who like to repeat a quest. It would not be a solution for many I know including my 2 static groups.

But nothing force that players to repeat that quests. They still could do it once and forget. They just don't earn xp bonus.
Actually I run only elite too and when I hit lv 20 , I leave 1/3 quests untouched because I have to much xp. W/o streak xp I probably have to do few more quests on elite .. nothing problematic.

[Oxarhamar]

You still could do only elite 1per quest.. but w/o bonuses. People already noticed that streak is not needed to get cap fast.
Xp curve was adjusted, there is no need to farm xp like it was before motu, even w/o streak.

Tell me, how you play before MotU? When there was no streak?

Streak may not be needed to cap fast but, you won't cap as fast without it.

Before MOTI you mean when the typical style of Heroic leveling was NNNNNNHE for many quests or EEEEEEHNC for some. Yeah bleh!

Unless they fix the XP for repeated runs. I'm against removing streak.

[redoubt]

running elite is mostly psychological. there is no real necessity to run elite. you don't need elite BB to level and you can always go back to get your elite favor if you want it bad enough. in my experience since ive been pugging most of the time since 2009, the past few years the masses have had the pleasure of almost no fail elite and running them fast paced. its a silly argument to use favor and affecting your leveling progression when there are multiple difficulty options available why elite cant be increased in challenge. back before MOTU, people were content with running quests on hard/norm and going back as a higher level for favor. it wasn't until there were better incentives for elite that people started asking to nerf the challenge so they could get the rewards easy enough.

There is no NEED. This is a game. Necessity is not a factor anywhere. We are really talking about play style and preferences.

Why run heroic elite?
1. Heroic Elite streak is the fast path to cap for my friends and I. There is little to no time difference for us in terms of individual quest completions and the time between quests is limited by run speed.
2. Max favor without having to re-run (which takes more time.)
3. Max free Turbine Points without having to re-run

Why run epic elite?
1. Challenge. For my friends and I, EE is a challenge. While the xp is nice, our completion times are often longer and we use more resources. There are more quests where we will want more people before we start (instead of having the LFM up while in progress.) This slows down questing if we are talking about xp/min.
2. Some additional favor for quests that do not have a heroic version.

[redoubt]

Ok so streak in current form is bad. People feel that that are forced to run elite only.

My solution:

Remove bravery streak from game and introduce single quest difficulty completions streak.
It should work as follow :
Player should complete quest on all difficulties to earn additional XP bonuses.
Completing quest on normal gives +20%Xp on next hard run, completing hard gives +40% xp on next elite run. Elite run reset bonuses. Each quest will have their own streak. Streak can't be shared among quests.

I can see this being useful in epic where there is less xp to go around and epic reincarnations do not reset first time bonuses and streaks.

I would not like this at all in heroic. I'm sick of repeating those quests already. I certainly don't want to have to run them 3x per life. Once and done per TR is plenty.

[Knobull]

But nothing force that players to repeat that quests. They still could do it once and forget. They just don't earn xp bonus.
Actually I run only elite too and when I hit lv 20 , I leave 1/3 quests untouched because I have to much xp. W/o streak xp I probably have to do few more quests on elite .. nothing problematic.

On this, I do have an opinion.

I recently cancelled my VIP subscription due to forum community issues. Details not relevant or allowed here, point is I am no longer VIP and cannot open quests on elite first time, I have to run normal and hard first.

So on to my point on this topic - correct, nothing forces me to repeat quests but favor rewards motivate me to do so. (House K bank space in particular). Also difficulty: normal is super-easy, if I want a challenge out of a quest I have to run it three times (even running quests with a base level 3 levels higher than my character level, which is the usual way I play now.)

That's all, just wanted to point out that some favor rewards are a big motivator for non-VIP players to run quests three times each. Sometimes I am OK with it, other times it is boring and I'd rather just move on to the next quest, so I tend to run a bunch of quests on normal, then run them all again on hard, then run them all again on elite - instead of running the same quest on normal, hard and elite all back-to-back.

I never really understood the need to tie difficulty settings to subscription status. Seems unnecessary and potentially damaging to the game to me. Being a long-time DDO fan, I put up with it, but not everybody would I guess.

[redoubt]

W/o streak xp I probably have to do few more quests on elite .. nothing problematic.

So you would do more quests which takes more time...

My completionist project is a multi year affair. On average its a 2 month cycle for me to level from 1 to 28. For people who do it in a week a few more quests per life might be minimal, they can still crank out a completionist in just a few months. For people like me, who are measuring making a completionist in YEARS, its a bigger impact.

I find it very annoying when people want to make it take longer and claim its no big deal. It makes me want to swear at them while I tell them to stop messing with how I play the game.

[Braegan]

Players who are not playing completionist and/or raid geared characters are not "sleepwalking" through Elite. In general (as has been said MANY times), these players still find EE challenging. That is why many of those players (including myself) don't want Elite to be made more difficult. We want to still be able to get our Favor and BB.

And I'm not sure why we are suddenly talking about EE. In your previous post you said:



I play quests once and done at level. Sounds like you are suggesting playing on Hard to get to Epics and then going back with your Epic character and do quests over in order to get the Elite Favor.



Nothing is "needed", this is a game. However the game is designed to encourage running Elite. That is just a fact.

Way to cherry pick!

You don't need to be a completionist and/or raid geared out to complete EE's in a group pretty easily nowadays. You can stumble through with just about any build mash some buttons with little to no chance at failure.

I suggested that the option to go back and get favor is there if it is important to you. However, nearly all the favor can be gained on HE as you level through heroics so it's just not an issue.

The game is designed to reward players who play on the highest difficulty system with marginally better xp/favor/loot. The game is also designed so that you can still reap the majority of those benefits without setting foot into the hardest difficulty.

Players need to let go of their egos and self-entitlement that they deserve to run the game on the highest difficulty. That is just a fact.

[Braegan]

The more I think about this, the best answer is to simply make the best gear, only a little better than the average gear.

That way the power gap is kept small.


...although right now the gap really isn't that small... it used to be; but it got a whole lot bigger in recent years.
On the other side though, there is a lot of nice gear available from non-raids right now, and it drops frequently.... a good thing IMO.

Right now people can actually get some real darn good stuff simply by doing a lot of quests, and not trying to grind. It still takes time, but all the casual player really needs to get some decent equipment is time doing a variety of quests, rather than grinding raids.

But despite that, there is a pretty big power gap right now.
I wish it were smaller...

What level are you talking about?

Maybe at some intermediate levels. But at level 28 there is very little difference in power from gear. Seriously, look at Enecro gear. Some of the most powerful and best in slot gear that can be had just by running EN.

[HAL]

Ok so streak in current form is bad. People feel that that are forced to run elite only.

My solution:

Remove bravery streak from game and introduce single quest difficulty completions streak.
It should work as follow :
Player should complete quest on all difficulties to earn additional XP bonuses.
Completing quest on normal gives +20%Xp on next hard run, completing hard gives +40% xp on next elite run. Elite run reset bonuses. Each quest will have their own streak. Streak can't be shared among quests.


One of the main reasons why people run Elite only is because they want to do a quest one time and be done. This proposal would only be for people who like to repeat a quest. It would not be a solution for many I know including my 2 static groups.


But nothing force that players to repeat that quests. They still could do it once and forget. They just don't earn xp bonus.
Actually I run only elite too and when I hit lv 20 , I leave 1/3 quests untouched because I have to much xp. W/o streak xp I probably have to do few more quests on elite .. nothing problematic.

If you need to complete a quest on Normal to get a Bonus on Hard, etc. then that system will encourage people to run the quest 3 times to get the best XP just as BB encourages people to only run Elite to get the best XP.

[Connman]

...Written on phone so lotsa typos

It is not the first time you posted this, and I am jut going to say what we all have been thinking, maybe, just maybe you need a....












BIGGER PHONE!

http://forums.androidcentral.com/attachments/general-news-discussion/91792d1384434838t-stop-giant-phones-big-cell-phone.jpg

[Blackheartox]

It is not the first time you posted this, and I am jut going to say what we all have been thinking, maybe, just maybe you need a....












BIGGER PHONE!

http://forums.androidcentral.com/attachments/general-news-discussion/91792d1384434838t-stop-giant-phones-big-cell-phone.jpg
Now i know on what il spend my first paycheck

[Oxarhamar]

What level are you talking about?

Maybe at some intermediate levels. But at level 28 there is very little difference in power from gear. Seriously, look at Enecro gear. Some of the most powerful and best in slot gear that can be had just by running EN.

Just a guess but, I'd assume they were refuring to Thunderforged.

[Sehenry03]

Streak may not be needed to cap fast but, you won't cap as fast without it.

Before MOTI you mean when the typical style of Heroic leveling was NNNNNNHE for many quests or EEEEEEHNC for some. Yeah bleh!

Unless they fix the XP for repeated runs. I'm against removing streak.

+1

I would rather have a BB for running all HE and EE content and level a bit faster then be forced to do the old system for the same xp or even be forced to run a few extra quests. Right now with BB I can pick and choose whatever quests/sagas I want to do that life and I don't HAVE to run everything if I don't want to.

[nibel]

~ The harder the content, the more player organizers have to pay attention to the gearing of potential adventurers. Sometimes it is the elitism of an organizer that just feels like having an easy run with geared out companions, but as the challenge of content increases it can also become more and more an issue of just being practical. If we tune content to be really hard then there will be players who are excluded because of gear. I've been there and it sucks to be excluded because you aren't geared up enough; we are sensitive to this. On the other hand making all content easy enough where gearing doesn't matter creates a game that not only lacks challenge, but also lacks any practical motivation for gearing up.

How about something like you (Turbine) did before, a "catch-up" pack, like Cannith non-raid gear and Eveningstar sets.

Eg, you can have this awesome thing that takes a long time to farm, and is useful from level 20, thus being great for people in the ETR train, or this new item that is on par with the previous one, but is ML 26, and thus, only useful at the high end, but is a lot easier to acquire. or that other new awesome item that is BETTER, but requires a long time to farm as well...

If done right, you can make old, obsolete gear have a huge lifespam. I think Greensteel is the best example of this kind of item: It is no longer endgame gear, but people still farm it because it is ML 11/12. If greensteel items were all level 16 (the level cap when shroud was released), I doubt they would survive the test of the time as well as they did. Maybe some clickies, like displacement, but not things like triple positive and min2.

If done wrong, you end up with a new dragontouched armor: It is good, but not good enough, or useful for long enough for all the work involved.

[Gremmlynn]

running elite is mostly psychological. there is no real necessity to run elite. you don't need elite BB to level and you can always go back to get your elite favor if you want it bad enough.Pretty much. Unfortunately, the game goes out of it's way to reinforce that psychology with the very mechanics you mention.

[JOTMON]

It is not the first time you posted this, and I am jut going to say what we all have been thinking, maybe, just maybe you need a....

BIGGER PHONE!

http://forums.androidcentral.com/attachments/general-news-discussion/91792d1384434838t-stop-giant-phones-big-cell-phone.jpg

I want that :)

[Monkey-Boy]

I want that :)

My Surface Tablet's pretty close, and DDO actually runs well on it :)

[Monkey-Boy]

If you claim one needs to be completionist and raid geared to not find EE challenging, then it makes you false.

This, anyone making this claim is a horrible player and their opinions on any matter should be summarily ignored. Same with people who claim you need FoTM builds or unlimited SP pots.

[Gremmlynn]

Players need to let go of their egos and self-entitlement that they deserve to run the game on the highest difficulty. That is just a fact.If that is a fact then I will say the game design is based on woefully unrealistic conditions because players simply are not going to do that.

Tell me if you think this sounds realistic? "Hey lets make a game where customers pay us to put aside their egos and sense of self entitlement and accept just what their effort and natural ability entitle them to. This should be so widely popular that we'll have investors lining up for the chance to front us start-up capital". Because that sure isn't how things are in the world I live in.

[Azarddoze]

If that is a fact then I will say the game design is based on woefully unrealistic conditions because players simply are not going to do that.

Tell me if you think this sounds realistic? "Hey lets make a game where customers pay us to put aside their egos and sense of self entitlement and accept just what their effort and natural ability entitle them to. This should be so widely popular that we'll have investors lining up for the chance to front us start-up capital". Because that sure isn't how things are in the world I live in.

It's a video game. Unless you're a pro LoL player making a living out of it... well then yeah, there is no ego to be had. It is totally natural that some people are better than others at something. Why shouldn't it be natural that devs also adapt their games to it by providing multiple degrees of challenges to cater to a larger audience?

[Cathimon]

If that is a fact then I will say the game design is based on woefully unrealistic conditions because players simply are not going to do that.

Tell me if you think this sounds realistic? "Hey lets make a game where customers pay us to put aside their egos and sense of self entitlement and accept just what their effort and natural ability entitle them to. This should be so widely popular that we'll have investors lining up for the chance to front us start-up capital". Because that sure isn't how things are in the world I live in.

What about this;

Let's make this game so challengeless that people just keep grinding XP and loot which is totally uneccessary to crush all current content designed only to be somewhat hard to the noobest of players. Once they're bored, they can go elsewhere.

[Gremmlynn]

This, anyone making this claim is a horrible player and their opinions on any matter should be summarily ignored. Same with people who claim you need FoTM builds or unlimited SP pots.Why?

[Seljuck]

I understand that for some people reincarnation and repetition of Heroic content is a form of End Game, but this time I want to leave that for other threads. This time I want to focus ONLY at epic end game and beyond.

I wanted to hear opinions about how end game in DDO should work. How do you guys envision epic end game. What solution you can subject under discussion.

We already have 12 pages of posts and only few persons referred to the essence of this topic.

[Gremmlynn]

It's a video game. Unless you're a pro LoL player making a living out of it... well then yeah, there is no ego to be had. It is totally natural that some people are better than others at something. Why shouldn't it be natural that devs also adapt their games to it by providing multiple degrees of challenges to cater to a larger audience?Are you honestly trying to tell me that you think most people leave their ego at the door when they log into video games, or for that matter when they do pretty much anything? Because that simply isn't my experience. Designing a game around players acting in a manner they are not likely to act in seems pretty darn foolish to me and saying it's the players own darn fault for not doing so generally doesn't cut it when explaining to your investors why you are losing customers.

They should add multiple degrees of challenge, but they should do it in a manner that takes those egos that their customers are NOT going to choose to leave at the door into account. Or even better yet, to stroke those egos at all levels of play. Rather than calling one level of difficulty "elite", give it a name like "nightmare" or "hell" and use the term "elite" for something that can be accomplished at all levels of difficulty.

[Postumus]

I understand that for some people reincarnation and repetition of Heroic content is a form of End Game, but this time I want to leave that for other threads. This time I want to focus ONLY at epic end game and beyond.

I wanted to hear opinions about how end game in DDO should work. How do you guys envision epic end game. What solution you can subject under discussion.

We already have 12 pages of posts and only few persons referred to the essence of this topic.


I'm not against the idea of a level 30 (or whatever the cap is) mythic or whatever quests similar to the old pre-motu level 20 epic mechanics. I know it holds no appeal for me or anyone I currently play with, and I will probably never run it.


I don't devour content the first couple of days after it comes out because I don't spend more than a few hours a day playing DDO, so the updates and level cap raises are frequent enough for me not to get bored. I also don't enjoy grinding at cap for, well, anything since once I'm not earning XP I either park my character, roll a new one, or TR.


If the 'mythic' level difficulty doesn't detract from new content, I don't have any objections to it.

[Rys]

I understand that for some people reincarnation and repetition of Heroic content is a form of End Game, but this time I want to leave that for other threads. This time I want to focus ONLY at epic end game and beyond.

I wanted to hear opinions about how end game in DDO should work. How do you guys envision epic end game. What solution you can subject under discussion.

We already have 12 pages of posts and only few persons referred to the essence of this topic.

I am sorry but I have to say this. If the developper jumps into the random thread and spills random thoughts this is what always happens. You can expect 100% derail.

[Braegan]

I don't see anyone doing this in this thread or the last three threads on this topic. Whom do you think is acting like a "whiny bottom feeder" and "bratty four-year-old" in this thread?


What I DO see is the same three posters who keep calling everyone who disagrees with their position "********", "bad players," and a slew of other insults. I think this is a disservice to the work Seljuk put into his OP by derailing it like this with personal attacks.


Maybe everyone could just be a bit more civil?

Well naming names would be a no-no, so not going there. :)

What I have seen is both sides of the camp taking turns being nasty. Sometimes it is provoked. Sometimes (in my case) I am just sick and tired of hearing the same passive-aggressive whiners complain over and over again that they don't want their easy button touched, want the best of the best, and don't care if a percentage of the population other then themselves is unhappy with the current state of the game. Those advocating a harder endgame (EE) are just trying to get a setting that fits them, while leaving three other choices for everyone else. Those wanting their EE untouched are alienating a percentage of players by allowing their hubris to interfere with logical thinking.

I could try, but I can't promise that.

[Azarddoze]

Are you honestly trying to tell me that you think most people leave there ego at the door when they log into video games, or for that matter when they do pretty much anything? Because that simply isn't my experience. Designing a game around players acting in a manner they are not likely to act in seems pretty darn foolish to me and saying it's the players own darn fault for not doing so generally doesn't cut it when explaining to your investors why you are losing customers.

They should add multiple degrees of challenge, but they should do it in a manner that takes those egos that their customers are NOT going to choose to leave at the door into account. Or even better yet, to stroke those egos at all levels of play. Rather than calling one level of difficulty "elite", give it a name like "nightmare" or "hell" and use the term "elite" for something that can be accomplished at all levels of difficulty.

Before nerfs became the easy way out to please the majority of new "not so much gamer" gamers, people would suck it up or choose another game. I don't believe that most people (non-elitist) playing MMOs have much ego involved, no. They desire, they envy, want, etc.

When it comes to challenge, the problem comes from people knowing about the nerf trend and simply asking for nerfs. It's like if you can't use your strenght, use your brain. Problem is, the way they operate to get what they want do work... and it comes with another problem. It changes the games in a way that others players don't like anymore. But here, we have multiple difficulties as a great solution so that content itself will never be exclusive to a % of the playerbase which is, if you ask me, awesome.

So for the sake of loot that doesn't even make a difference in reality, should we really please a bunch of whiners in such way that it affects the GAMEPLAY and FUN for others. I personally don't think so. Reverting back to a harder game will have consequences number wise perhaps (maybe positive, we don't know). But take a second and think about it, there are 3 others difficulty to have FUN and enjoy the GAMEPLAY that the game offers, where does a couple more fluff for a harder challenge stop making sense?


Speaking of making sense... not sure this came out exactly like how I would have liked it to.

[Braegan]

I understand that for some people reincarnation and repetition of Heroic content is a form of End Game, but this time I want to leave that for other threads. This time I want to focus ONLY at epic end game and beyond.

I wanted to hear opinions about how end game in DDO should work. How do you guys envision epic end game. What solution you can subject under discussion.

We already have 12 pages of posts and only few persons referred to the essence of this topic.

Apologies OP. Thread derails are a fact of posting tho, heh.

To offer to the pot, End Game restoration requires a few things. Compared to when we had a actual end game (pre-motu) the following things have destroyed a chance at a continued end game:

- Far too easily acquired loot. Love it or hate it S/S/S method kept folks busy.
- Raid Timer Bypasses. Absolutely kills longevity.
- New loot eclipsing old loot at a ridiculous speed. Raid trains were run because the raids that were developed and run at the time did not invalidate each other.
- Dupers and Cheating. Absolutely kills longevity. Allowing it to go on as long as it has really did some damage to the economy and the community.
- Challenge lowered by introducing EC-EE instead of just Epic. Allowed and promoted soloing instead of grouping. A fatal mistake in an mmo, imo.
- Spread of character levels growing greater. While increases to advancement are to be expected some times, the cap of 20 allowed grouping of high level heroic characters and capped characters with a smaller gap between character power and performance.

That's just off the top of my head where things went wrong. To make things better change where things went wrong.

[Seljuck]

Apologies OP. Thread derails are a fact of posting tho, heh.

To offer to the pot, End Game restoration requires a few things. Compared to when we had a actual end game (pre-motu) the following things have destroyed a chance at a continued end game:

- Far too easily acquired loot. Love it or hate it S/S/S method kept folks busy.
- Raid Timer Bypasses. Absolutely kills longevity.
- New loot eclipsing old loot at a ridiculous speed. Raid trains were run because the raids that were developed and run at the time did not invalidate each other.
- Dupers and Cheating. Absolutely kills longevity. Allowing it to go on as long as it has really did some damage to the economy and the community.
- Challenge lowered by introducing EC-EE instead of just Epic. Allowed and promoted soloing instead of grouping. A fatal mistake in an mmo, imo.
- Spread of character levels growing greater. While increases to advancement are to be expected some times, the cap of 20 allowed grouping of high level heroic characters and capped characters with a smaller gap between character power and performance.

That's just off the top of my head where things went wrong. To make things better change where things went wrong.

Thanks for your opinion. That's actually, the same points that come to my mind.

Of Course End game dont have o look the same as it was at lv 20th. If someone have different ideas, please share it with community. :)

[Gremmlynn]

I understand that for some people reincarnation and repetition of Heroic content is a form of End Game, but this time I want to leave that for other threads. This time I want to focus ONLY at epic end game and beyond.

I wanted to hear opinions about how end game in DDO should work. How do you guys envision epic end game. What solution you can subject under discussion.

We already have 12 pages of posts and only few persons referred to the essence of this topic.Personally, I see the current epic game as little different than heroic as far as end game is concerned.

End game should be what is done with capped characters and should be kept separate from the rest even if those same characters are going back and forth between the two.

It should use mechanics something like epic destinies that can't be used in the other game but even more so. By this I mean that the content itself should lock it out. Same for gear, though some storage issues would need to be addressed.

I would also with some sort of consumable power mechanic with one or both these things to deal with their accumulation. So instead of xp, one would earn "end game points" that are consumed by using, or up-powering usages of, various end game powers and/or gear, fueling the desire to keep gaining them. Sort of like how meta-magics work.

[Monkey-Boy]

Why?

because they are wrong.

[Gremmlynn]

So for the sake of loot that doesn't even make a difference in reality, should we really please a bunch of whiners in such way that it affects the GAMEPLAY and FUN for others. I personally don't think so. Reverting back to a harder game will have consequences number wise perhaps (maybe positive, we don't know). But take a second and think about it, there are 3 others difficulty to have FUN and enjoy the GAMEPLAY that the game offers, where does a couple more fluff for a harder challenge stop making sense?If it doesn't make a difference in reality, how does it make the game play better?

Also, it stops making sense as soon as it has any sort of negative effect on the game's bottom line.

Here's the thing. I'll be the first to admit, I could be wrong in my particulars. Those are no more than educated guesses on my part. But my general premise is that this game, or any commercial venture for that matter, will always favor the objective reality of profits over subjective things like what is fair or deserved unless the owners, in this case the WB stockholders, tell them otherwise.

I just don't see the point of even discussing the issue from any other perspective.

[Gremmlynn]

You seem to be mistaken. Making one challenge setting out of four doesn't affect the financial success of the game, except perhaps in a positive manner. Think of all the lost subs due to boredom and casualization.

No, if anyone really cared about the longevity of the game they would understand their needs to be a fitting setting for all players. There isn't that currently, and some vocal groups are actively trying to keep it that way for selfish reasons. I am advocating a system that includes all player types, others are advocating their own agendas.Actually, I agree with you. Where I see the problem is when they start adding things like BB or tired loot to invalidate that by making only one the superior setting to play.

Here's the thing. If you don't want others desiring to be in your preferred playground, don't give them reasons to want to.

[Gremmlynn]

How do you even know what's commercially realistic? The answer is you don't.It's fairly simple, most people are not willing to pay for the opportunity to consistently fail.

[Gremmlynn]

because they are wrong.Morally or factually?

[Cathimon]

It's fairly simple, most people are not willing to pay for the opportunity to consistently fail.

I say the opposite. Most people are not willing to pay for the opportunity to play a game in which they consistently win.

[Erdrique]

Very thoughtful ideas in here. I haven't read all of the posts and comments in here but you do lay out a lot of interesting topics that are worth exploring. I can see setting up a new end of the game setting for those wanting that type of endgame. It wouldn't bother me and I would be curious to see how successful a "mythic" difficult setting would be. One thing I would like to see if the older gear is a way to "combine" them together in some type of crafting mechanism. Instead of turning an existing item into a "sentient" version but upgrading an existing item by it "absorbing" some of the power from a different item. Perhaps there could be some type of an alter set up that will allow you to extract the essence of a special property of the older gear raid/epic gear and allow you to apply it to your existing gear. There would have to be some type of limiting factor here but it would allow you to use up the old gear you have gathered and to apply it existing gear you have now.

Preparing for the "end game" is definitely a challenge. I probably wouldn't be entering this type of questing myself, as I prefer to reincarnate as a way to increase the power of my character, but eventually you would like that this would eventually hit a limit so having something else to turn to would be important. This next year should be interesting to see what is made with the end game.

[Monkey-Boy]

Morally or factually?

Factually :)

[slarden]

I say the opposite. Most people are not willing to pay for the opportunity to play a game in which they consistently win.

This isn't a game about winning and losing. People play this for fun and one constant I've noticed is that people want to make progress. Whatever Turbine does they need to make sure they are giving an opportunity to progress for the various type of players.

I've seen wipes on EN MOD with some of the top Sarlona players in the party. Of course that is fine - there is always a reason when a party wipes and improvements can be made. However, one thing I've learned from pugging MOD is that this game isn't too easy for most players. EN MOD is challenging for the average epic player on Sarlona. EH epic orchard runs outnumber EE epic orchard runs by over 10 to 1 easily. I am sure the developers data would back this all up as well.

So the question becomes how can Turbine add more challenge for you and people like you without negatively impacting the majority of players. Sev seems to have a good grasp on that and acknowledged the difficulty in making choices.

I hope they are able to find a solution that works for you, but not at the expense of the majority of players.

[Braegan]

Actually, I agree with you. Where I see the problem is when they start adding things like BB or tired loot to invalidate that by making only one the superior setting to play.

Here's the thing. If you don't want others desiring to be in your preferred playground, don't give them reasons to want to.

But, the thing is there has to be motivation to run that superior setting. Loot is a driving goal. XP is another.

However, as proven it isn't needed to be completely viable in DDO. But the highest difficulty should be rewarding to those that play it. For the longest time that excluded me, and you never once heard me complain about it. I only wish more would follow my example.

[Connman]

But, the thing is there has to be motivation to run that superior setting. Loot is a driving goal. XP is another.

However, as proven it isn't needed to be completely viable in DDO. But the highest difficulty should be rewarding to those that play it. For the longest time that excluded me, and you never once heard me complain about it. I only wish more would follow my example.

I agree completely.

For years the hardest content was out of my reach as well. It was something to strive for.

This means absolutely nothing to anyone other than me. But it was one of the best days in DDO for me:
I was labeled "Mr solo's elite sins because he can" by a very good player that I looked up too. At a time when it was an accomplishment.

[slarden]

But, the thing is there has to be motivation to run that superior setting. Loot is a driving goal. XP is another.

However, as proven it isn't needed to be completely viable in DDO. But the highest difficulty should be rewarding to those that play it. For the longest time that excluded me, and you never once heard me complain about it. I only wish more would follow my example.

There lies the problem. The other 2 MMOs I am familiar with have extremely diminishing returns for the most difficult content. It's a long grind that is totally optional and adds minimal amounts of player power that are not necessary to run any content. In one case, the loot can be acquired other ways besides running the content.

Giving more power to the people that can already run the most difficult content and chronically complain it's too easy is very counter-intuitive. In anything the complaints about the game being too easy make it clear than any extra rewards should be things that don't contribute to player power - perhaps cosmetics.

XP rewards for bravery bonus should be replaced by a grouping a bonus. The reward curve for elite should be reduced and the difficulty for elite signifcantly increased - possibly increasing CR by 30% over what it is now and increasing scaling to 6. Make the game harder and more challenging and give diminishing returns for harder content like other games do. Make it appeal to people that really want a challenge and not the pretenders that want more loot for using exploits to defeat difficult content.

[Faltout]

This isn't a game about winning and losing.
It isn't? Ok, maybe it isn't. But you can't deny that it's a game of games of winning or losing. Quests can fail or can succeed. And like any other game where you may lose, you hope that the next time you'll do something different and succeed.

People play this for fun and one constant I've noticed is that people want to make progress. Whatever Turbine does they need to make sure they are giving an opportunity to progress for the various type of players.
And they want this progress to be meaningful. To have a cost. To have to work towards it. Progress by itself is not something. It has to be achieved.
And all this even if the player may say otherwise. "No, I just want this loot. I don't care how I get it" is totally a lie. Even if you don't want it to be.

P.S. I'm not arguing for any side here. Just making a correction.

[Braegan]

There lies the problem. The other 2 MMOs I am familiar with have extremely diminishing returns for the most difficult content. It's a long grind that is totally optional and adds minimal amounts of player power that are not necessary to run any content. In one case, the loot can be acquired other ways besides running the content.

Giving more power to the people that can already run the most difficult content and chronically complain it's too easy is very counter-intuitive. In anything the complaints about the game being too easy make it clear than any extra rewards should be things that don't contribute to player power - perhaps cosmetics.

XP rewards for bravery bonus should be replaced by a grouping a bonus. The reward curve for elite should be reduced and the difficulty for elite signifcantly increased - possibly increasing CR by 30% over what it is now and increasing scaling to 6. Make the game harder and more challenging and give diminishing returns for harder content like other games do. Make it appeal to people that really want a challenge and not the pretenders that want more loot for using exploits to defeat difficult content.

On the reward system for those that can run the highest difficulty. Yes, there are a couple on the boards here that just complain so much it makes it hard to cut the wheat as it were. But I know a lot of players that just quietly left because they were bored. It only is beneficial to a business to want to appeal to a larger audience. I know you are saying it shouldn't affect power but I don't think a cosmetic is enough to get a real powergamer to keep on playing. A simple +1 is tho, from my experience. A small boost that doesn't make or break a build but would make a number crunching, ocd, powergammer grind for is good to keep them playing.

Interesting idea on the XP part. I really like the old school team play that pre motu epics promoted. I am sure that someone will complain tho if it's made because back in the day they hated waiting on class X to join now they would hate to wait for 6 members to join for full xp.

On the increase of difficulty for EE. I really wish it was handled like early harbor quests. Like how enemy casters have different spells they use for example. I would much rather that than a flat blanket increase. Although I am a practical man and I understand big business. I know they have to work with what they have to work with. I am for a push to increase EE difficulty, but if it comes to a blanket push I hope they tread carefully over the saves area as that can render a lot of classes completely useless yet again.

[slarden]

It isn't? Ok, maybe it isn't. But you can't deny that it's a game of games of winning or losing. Quests can fail or can succeed. And like any other game where you may lose, you hope that the next time you'll do something different and succeed.

And they want this progress to be meaningful. To have a cost. To have to work towards it. Progress by itself is not something. It has to be achieved.
And all this even if the player may say otherwise. "No, I just want this loot. I don't care how I get it" is totally a lie. Even if you don't want it to be.

P.S. I'm not arguing for any side here. Just making a correction.

The true competitive types will choose something like chess where they have opponents. Not a game where you succeed simply by putting in time and learned behavior.

I see people every day that are proud of the progress they made. I don't think there is a problem with people experiencing meaningful progress except for the chronically discontent - they will never be happy.

I am seeing average players and even completionist vets struggling in EN MOD. I am sure the dev data will show that most people are not rolling over all content. The problem we have now is the easiest content in the game is also the most rewarding for xp due to sagas. People are taking the path of least resistance which is a self-inflicted problem.

People want progress. That is both normal and I am sure the devs understand that. As long as Turbine gets that and designs the game around it - they can make the diverse group of players happy (to the extent their own personality will allow it).

[Ellihor]

I had a thread about this but it was not concerning only loot problems but a general vision of the game, you can see the full text here https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/454603-How-to-Fix-DDO, but i'll quote the loot part anyways:


The key reasons why DDO worked very well before the expansion, and why it as well worked fine (but not as well as before) for a time after it, was that it was focused on endgame item grinding. We did not have to TR that much, the majority of characters was champion, many were hero and only a few was legend.

The reason for it happen is that back in those days, staying at cap to get items was worth more to improve the character than to TR it. I know many people enjoy farming xp more than staying at cap, but the vast majority of them do not, otherwise we wouldn’t have so many people sitting at 20 level cap for years without ever TRing. The game focus MUST be level cap item farm. Focusing on it would not brake heroic levels for those who want to play at it (as if it was not already totally broken).


When you focus on level cap item farming, there are some peculiarities you have to acknowledge. First, it should takes months to complete an item. Back in the days, we work for months in a single piece of gear, BUT we also knew that the item would be useful for YEARS.

It was pretty rare to find a character with all gear slots filled with the best-in-slot. Nowadays it’s completely the opposite. You launch something, and it just dump to oblivion 80% of the items we had before because the new ones are so much better, and (generalizing) everyone is running with the new best-in-slot before you even release the next update.

One of the best reason why this happened, was that raids had timers and we could not bypass them. In addition, the epic quests had timers as well. When you release the quests designed for lv 30 cap, I hope you place 18 hour timer on them, make them give 0 xp, and also make the timer of the level cap raids impossible to bypass. Obviously, it would cause problems with raid timer bypass sells in the store, but that’s the price you have to pay to have a healthy game.